On Wednesday, Sadam Abdusalam went to Australia’s federal Parliament House for the first time and spent almost 12 hours meeting politicians – meetings he has spent almost two years hoping for – in which he pleaded for their help to bring his wife and nearly two-year-old son home.

Last week Abdusalam’s story was broadcast on Four Corners, detailing how his wife and son are trapped in China because they are Uighurs – ethnic minority Muslims.

It was not the first time he had told his story publicly – he first did so to Buzzfeed in February, and then to Guardian Australia in April, when Guardian Australia revealed there were at least five Australian children trapped in China due to the country’s increasingly brutal crackdown on Uighur people in the far-west region of Xinjiang.

But it was the first time Abdusalam had revealed his identity, and feels as though things might finally be shifting for his family. He hopes his wife and son might soon be able to come to Australia – ideally in time for his son’s second birthday on 31 August – meaning he could meet his son for the first time.

Australian Uighur Sadam Abdusalam holds up a photo of his wife Nadila Wumaier and their baby son Lutifeier, whom he has never met. He is trying to get them released from China. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

“[The MPs] said: ‘Don’t think we forget about you, we will keep working’,” says Abdusalam, who has been trying to get a meeting with the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the immigration minister, David Coleman, for months. He spent 18 months battling the home affairs department, which initially refused to recognise his son’s Australian citizenship.

While Abdusalam is grateful for the support the government is showing his family now, he says on his recent trip to Canberra he struggled with a question the entire Uighur community is grappling with.

“I wanted to tell them: ‘Where have you been the last few years?’”

Sadam Abdulsalam says he is grateful for the support the Australian government is now showing his family, who remain trapped in China. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

It is almost a year since the United Nations reported that an estimated one million people, mostly Uighurs, were being held in detention centres across Xinjiang and urged China to release them.

Even before then, there were regular reports that Uighurs were subject to extraordinary surveillance, required to give blood, DNA and biometric face scans, forced to hand over their passports, denied permission to leave Xinjiang and detained in huge numbers. China has finally been forced to admit the detention centres exist, but still insists they are “vocational training centres”. Uighurs may be held there for crimes such as having a beard, having a Muslim name, having WhatsApp on their phone, having family members who live abroad, or for no apparent reason at all.

But it was only two weeks ago that a statement was issued by 22 countries condemning China’s treatment of Uighur and other minorities. So why has it taken so long for the world to care about the plight of the Uighurs?

‘No one wants to talk’

“It has been taking a surprisingly long time,” says Nury Turkel, chairman of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington. “There are a couple of reasons: one is obviously the China factor. It’s a big country, kind of a reckless country, governments are often very careful to take a stand.”

James Leibold, an associate professor in politics and Asian studies at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, says China’s economic clout and other countries’ reluctance to rock the trade boat is clearly a factor, but there are others.

Most people in the west have not heard of Uighurs or Xinjiang – a very remote part of China – and awareness of their plight has not been championed by a figure well-known in the west, as the Tibetan situation was by the Dalai Lama.

China is blueprinting a way of eradicating Muslim identity from a population. Human Rights Watch's Elaine Pearson

Then there is the difficulty in getting information out of Xinjiang. China has restricted access to foreign journalists, other than those taken on bizarre propaganda tours, so reporters have largely been left to rely on accounts of escapees and the diaspora as well as satellite imagery to try to piece together what is going on there.

“The informational warfare that’s occurring at present … gives cover to governments or allows governments not to respond because they will say: ‘We don’t really know what’s happening’,” says Leibold.

China has exacted severe retribution against those who have spoken out, including Abdusalam’s wife who, since the Four Corners broadcast, has been taken in by police almost every day and questioned for three or four hours.

“They have been telling her to tell me to keep my mouth shut,” says Abdusalam. “She’s really frightened.”

“No one wants to talk, with good reason,” says Leibold.

‘Slow-burning act of cultural genocide’

China has also walked a “very deliberate and very careful” line in committing serious human rights abuses without perpetrating the sort of physical violence that might attract widespread global condemnation, says Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch.

“I think part of the reason this is under the radar is that people aren’t overtly being killed or raped or tortured.” Despite this, Pearson says what China is doing in Xinjiang is “absolutely terrifying”.

Protesters denounce China’s treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims during a rally in Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph: Kemal Aslan/Depo Photos via ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

“They are blueprinting a way of eradicating Muslim identity from a population and I think that’s something we should all be quite scared about.

“We spend so much time and energy on this religious freedom debate in Australia; well here’s a group of people that are about to be exterminated in terms of their religion,” says Pearson.

Leibold says a “subtle, unarticulated bias against Islam” may also go some way to explain why the “slow-burning act of cultural genocide” in Xinjiang has not gained traction in western countries.

“Muslims unfortunately have very little sympathy globally at the moment. There is this spectre of Islamophobia globally that sits behind this issue,” says Leibold.

Turkel believes things have shifted in recent months. In Washington DC, where he is based, there is momentum for legislation enforcing targeted sanctions at senior Chinese officials.

But Australia could do more, he says. “I would like to see the Australian government be a little more steady and outspoken,” he says, particularly in light of the Australian children, including Abdusalam’s, who are trapped in Xinjiang, unable to return home to their Australian parents.

“It should keep Australian politicians awake at night.”