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In the summer of 2021, Zeynure Hasan was at her home in Istanbul when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four stressful days since their last contact, when he was preparing to take a flight to Morocco. The lack of communication had been difficult.

But the update her husband Idris delivered was more alarming. He explained that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been taken into custody and jailed. Authorities stated he would be deported to China. "Reach out to anyone who can rescue me," he pleaded, before the line went dead.

Life as Uyghurs in Turkey

Zeynure, in her early thirties, and Idris, 37, are part of the Uyghur community, which constitutes about 50% of the residents in China's north-western Xinjiang region. Over the past decade, more than a million Uyghurs are estimated to have been detained in alleged "re-education camps," where they faced torture for commonplace actions like attending a place of worship or wearing a hijab.

The couple had joined many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the 2010s. They believed they would find security in their new home, but quickly found they were wrong.

"I was told that the Beijing officials warned to shut down all its factories in the country if Morocco released him," she explained.

After moving in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an English teacher, while Idris started as a translator and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur news and printed works. They had three children and felt able to practice as followers of Islam.

But when one of Idris's best friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was arrested in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was pressuring Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt at risk due to his previous detention, which he suspected was linked to his work with activists and promoting Uyghur culture. He decided to escape to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had expired, had to remain with the children until her husband could apply for a travel document for the family.

A Costly Mistake

Leaving Turkey turned out to be a disastrous mistake. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials pulled him aside for questioning. "After he was eventually allowed to get on the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had let him go, but it felt like a set-up to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was taken off the plane and detained by Moroccan authorities.

Over the past decade, China has been utilizing the international police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had asked for Idris to be added on the agency's most-wanted "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials let him take the flight aware he would be apprehended upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs fear most: challenge China, regardless of the risks.

Family Pressure

Soon after learning of her husband's detention, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her relatives since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were imprisoned for several months upon their going back to China.

Her parents had a chilling warning. "They said, 'We know your husband is not with you. Perhaps we can assist you,'" she explained. "I realized there must be some authorities there with them and just pretended like I didn't know anything. But they persisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Avoid doing anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything bad about China.'"

But with her husband's life at risk, the quiet-mannered Zeynure was not going to remain silent. She had been raised seeing women having their hijabs forcibly removed in open by the police and had been resolved to live in a country with freedom of belief.

"Before my husband was arrested in Morocco, I didn't do anything. I was just caring for my family; I didn't even have Facebook or Twitter. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the truth to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs sent to China will be abused or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has two distinct types of memories of her childhood in Xinjiang. The first was of blissful days spent in the rural areas with her grandparents, who were agricultural workers. "I'd play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The relatives around the home and farm. It was too beautiful, like a scene from a book."

The second was as a Muslim Uyghur in Xinjiang, of school holidays interrupted by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from attending the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China says it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other nations, including the US, say its actions constitute ethnic cleansing. Zeynure says she never felt free to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "People who went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia were arrested and sent to prison and told they must have some issue in their brain.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their religion and culture. They said 'you should believe in us, we gave you employment and this beautiful living here'," says Zeynure.

She eventually decided to depart China after returning home from college in another part of China to a increasing repression on beliefs in 2011. It was then that she was introduced to Idris by one of her school friends. "She knew we both had made the decision to go abroad and told us perhaps we could get together and go together."

Zeynure says she was right away comforted by Idris. "I saw he was very truthful and reserved, and couldn't be dishonest or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to wed me, but Idris was unique."

A New Life in Turkey

Within two months they were married and ready to move for a new life in Turkey. They knew it was an Muslim-majority country with many believers and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and shared ethnicity. "It was like Uyghurs' alternative homeland," says Zeynure. As a educator and creative, they could also support the Uyghur population in exile. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or language so we think it's our responsibility to not let it disappear," she says.

But their relief at locating a place of safety overseas was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting dissidents abroad through the use of monitoring, intimidation and physical assault. But what Idris was faced was a newer method of control: using China's growing economic leverage to force other nations to bend to its demands, including detaining and deporting Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and discovering he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a short window of opportunity to try to stop his deportation to China. She immediately reached out to as many Uyghur support groups as she could find listed online in Europe and the US and pleaded for assistance. She was brave despite China having already shown a willingness to go after the family members of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting updates on social media. To her surprise, copycat protests soon followed in Morocco calling for Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to put out a announcement saying his deportation was a issue for the judicial system to decide.

In early August 2021, Interpol cancelled Idris's alert after being urged to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be sent back to China. Zeynure says there was huge political influence from Beijing, which made {little sense|