ISLAMABAD: Pakistani businessmen, whose wives and children are trapped in China’s restive Xinjiang province, have sought the government’s help to get them released from “re-education” camps where they are allegedly being held on vague charges of extremism.

“We have approached our lawmakers and the government numerous times for help, but in vain so far,” Johar Ali, whose wife — a Chinese citizen from the Uighur community who has been detained since February 2017 — said.

Ali is a resident of Gilgit-Baltistan who got married to a Chinese Muslim in 2016 during a business trip to the country. “We were living a happy life,” he told Arab News, adding that his wife “went to meet her parents in China and then never returned. She is detained there in a re-education camp”.

He claimed that he was approached by Chinese authorities a few months ago with a proposal to divorce his wife. “How can I do that, I told them. We are legal partners and committed nothing wrong,” he said.

There are no exact figures to ascertain how many Chinese Uighur women, married to Pakistani men, have been detained in Xinjiang, a region that borders Pakistan and Central Asia. However, some Pakistani victims estimate that about 300 to 400 Uighur women have either been detained in Chinese camps or forbidden from leaving their hometown.

In March this year, the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly — through a unanimous resolution — called for the federal government to take urgent steps for the release of more than 50 Chinese women married to men from the region and detained in Xinjiang.

The assembly was informed that a majority of the men married to Uighur women were affiliated with import and export businesses between Pakistan and China.

In a recent letter addressed to the Foreign Office and Pakistan’s embassy in Beijing, the Pakistani husbands alleged that their Chinese wives were being forcefully held in the “re-education” camps in China. “We have married Chinese women after fulfilling all legal requirements …. two years back Chinese authorities had detained our wives without assigning any reason,” the letter said.

However, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that it was collecting details about the issue and would soon update the media on it. “We are looking into the matter and will update you as soon as we get specific details on it from relevant quarters,” Dr. Mohammad Faisal, spokesman for the Foreign Office, told Arab News.