China has condemned a French parliament resolution on Friday that accuses Beijing of committing a genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population, a move that has strained relations two weeks before the Winter Olympics.
The resolution adds to the chorus of western nations that have criticised Beijing for placing around one million Uyghurs in forced labour camps, describing the violence perpetrated by the People's Republic of China against the Uyghurs as crimes against humanity and genocide. The United States government has accused China of genocide in western Xinjiang.
China rejects such accusations and hit French lawmakers on Friday.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular press conference that the French National Assembly's resolution on Xinjiang ignores facts and legal knowledge and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. China opposes it. The French motion was proposed by the opposition Socialists in the lower house of parliament but was backed by President Emmanuel Macron's Republic on the Move LREM party.
The non-binding resolution of France's National Assembly was adopted by 169 votes in favor and just one against on Thursday.
It calls for the French government to take the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People's Republic of China to protect the minority group in the Xinjiang region.
China is a great power. Socialist party chief Olivier Faure said that we refuse to submit to the propaganda of a regime that is banking on our cowardice and our avarice to perpetrate a genocide in plain sight.
He recounted testimony to parliament from Uyghur survivors who told of conditions inside internment camps where men and women were unable to lie down in cells, subjected to rape and torture, as well as forced organ transplants.
The French government has refused to label China's treatment of the Uyghur minority a genocide, arguing that it is a legal term that can only be proven by a judicial investigation.
Beijing turned down repeated requests from the UN High Commission for Human Rights to visit the region to investigate.
President Emmanuel Macron, who was trying to avoid being dragged into increasingly confrontational ties between China and the United States, was asked about the Uyghurs in an appearance before the European Parliament on Wednesday.
France raises this in a very clear way in all of our bilateral talks with Beijing, he told campaigning MEP Raphael Glucksmann.
He said he was in favor of an EU regulation that would ban import of goods that resulted from forced labour, and that he supported increasing requirements on European companies operating in China to check supply chains.
Human rights groups say they have found evidence of mass detentions, forced labour, political indoctrination, torture and forced sterilization in Xinjiang.
Beijing denies genocide or the existence of forced labour camps in Xinjiang, and has accused Uyghurs of lying overseas about conditions inside the northwestern region of being paid liars.
After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
The United States has imposed sanctions on a growing list of Chinese politicians and companies over the treatment of the Uyghurs, leading to tit-for-tat measures from Beijing.
China has sanctioned European, British and US lawmakers, as well as academics studying Xinjiang and a London law firm.