According to the UN, torture allegations were credible. It also cited possible crimes against humanity.
The United Nations released a bombshell report late Wednesday into serious human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region,
According to the UN, torture allegations were credible. It also cited possible crimes against humanity.
The long-awaited report detailed a string of rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western region.
It, however, did not make any reference to genocide as alleged by the United States and other critics, AFP reports.
"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups... may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity," the report said.
It said the world must now pay "urgent attention" to the human rights situation in the Xinjiang region.
The assessment brings the UN seal to many of the allegations about China's treatment of people in Xinjiang that have long been made by rights groups, Western nations and the Uyghur community in exile.
Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights chief, decided that a full assessment was needed of the situation inside the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
The report was in the making for around a year and its release was bitterly opposed by China.
Bachelet was determined to release it before her four-year term as the UN high commissioner for human rights expired at the end of August -- and did so with 13 minutes to spare at 11:47pm in Geneva.
"I said that I would publish it before my mandate ended and I have," Bachelet said in an email sent to AFP on Thursday.
"The politicisation of these serious human rights issues by some states did not help," she added.
China has been accused for years of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims in the region.
But it has vehemently rejected the claims, insisting it is running vocational centres designed to curb extremism, Yahoo News reports.
"Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the government's application of counter-terrorism and counter-'extremism' strategies," the UN report said.
China's mission in Geneva hit out at the report and maintained its firm opposition to its release.
"Based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of presumption of guilt, the so-called 'assessment' distorts China's laws and policies, and wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China's internal affairs," it said.
"People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are living a happy life in peace and contentment. It is the greatest human rights protection and the best human rights practice," the mission insisted.