For the last year, Sam has seen his baby only in 15-second snatches. The 28-year-old Australian citizen, who lives in Sydney, has never met his 18-month-old son, who has been trapped in China with Sam’s wife, Gulyar, since she returned there while four months’ pregnant.
Gulyar is a Chinese citizen and, like Sam, a member of the persecuted Uighur ethnic minority. She is one of three mothers who the Guardian can reveal are stuck in China with their Australian children due to Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on the Uighur, which has left at least one million Muslims in detention centres across the far-western region of Xinjiang.
