Mirza Imran Baig, 40, who trades between his home city of Lahore and Urumqui, the Xinjiang regional capital, said his wife was detained in a "re-education" camp in her native Bachu county for two months in May and June 2017 and had been unable to leave her hometown since her release.
His wife, Mailikemu Maimati, 33, and their four-year-old son, who are both Chinese nationals,
are unable to get their passports
back from Chinese authorities, he told Reuters outside the Pakistan embassy in Beijing.
"My ambassador says, ´Wait, wait, wait, one day, two
days.´ Okay, I wait," Baig said late on
Tuesday, after his meeting.
Reuters could not immediately reach the ambassador, Masood Khalid, to seek comment.
Beijing says it faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists in Xinjiang
and has rejected accusations of mistreatment.
Asked about the Pakistani businessmen on Tuesday, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Foreign
Ministry, told a regular news
briefing that he was not aware of the situation.
Mian Shahid Ilyas, a businessman in Lahore who has been collecting details of cases and
seeking government support, said he was optimistic the new government would help.
Pakistan´s foreign ministry in Islamabad did not reply to questions from Reuters on the Uighur
spouses.
"A lot of people get married like us. It´s no problem. But in 2017 they
start to seal everything off in Xinjiang," Ilyas, who said his Chinese Uighur wife, a citizen of China,
had been detained since April 2017, told
Reuters by telephone.
Ilyas said he had confirmed details of 38 cases but believed there were more than 300 similar cases
of Pakistani husbands whose wives
and children, most of them Uighurs, had been stuck in Xinjiang for more than a year, in camps or confined
to homes.
The handful of businessmen, including Baig, is travelling to China in groups of twos and threes, to
avoid raising suspicion, parking
themselves at the embassy to make their case, he said.
"This is China´s big mistake," said Ilyas. "Before
people did not know how they treated Muslims. Now, everyone knows. Reuters