During his annual news conference on Sunday, China’s foreign minister says allegations his country is carrying out genocide against Muslim ethnic Uighurs are “ridiculously absurd” and “a complete lie”.

A number of nations, including the US, have used the term to describe Chinese treatment of Uighur people.

It comes amid growing evidence of abuses at “re-education camps” for Uighurs in Xinjiang province.

China has been accused of carrying out forced sterilization on Uighur women and separating children from their families.

BBC investigations suggest that Uighurs are being used as forced labor and have revealed allegations of systematic rape and torture. China has banned BBC World News television over the corporation’s coverage of the Uighur issue and coronavirus.

The UN says at least one million members of the Muslim minority are being held in the camps, which China says provide vocational training and are aimed at eradicating extremism.

But both the current and former US secretaries of state have described China’s treatment of Uighurs as genocide, as have the Canadian and Dutch parliaments.

The UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The allegations have prompted calls in some countries to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.