China has responded furiously to a United Nations report on alleged human rights abuses in its northwestern Xinjiang region targeting Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim ethnic minorities.
The report has been in the works for years and was released despite Chinese efforts to delay or block it, aware of how it could validate claims that more than 1 million ethnic minority members were forcibly sent to centres it says were for vocational training.
Those who were held, their relatives and monitoring groups describe them as prison-like reeducation centres where inmates were forced to denounce Islam and their traditional culture, while swearing fidelity to the ruling Communist Party.
The camps have been part of a widespread campaign of repression in Xinjiang, allegedly including involuntary sterilisations of women, forced labour, the demolition of mosques and other religious sites, the separation of Muslim children from their families and the harassment of minority members living abroad.
WHERE IS XINJIANG AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CHINA?
Xinjiang is a vast but sparsely populated region of mountains, forests and deserts in far northwestern China that borders Russia, Pakistan and several Central Asian nations.
The ancient Silk Road ran through parts of it and various nationalities and Chinese empires controlled its cities and oases over the centuries, with the Communist Party taking complete control following its 1949 victory in the Chinese civil war.
The region contains a wealth of natural resources, including oil, gas and rare earth minerals, but perhaps its most important value is as a strategic buffer that extends China's influence westward. While China and Russia have largely aligned their foreign policies in recent years, Xinjiang was on the front line of their Cold War rivalry and remains important as an assertion of Chinese influence in Moscow's back yard.
WHAT PROMPTED CHINA'S CRACKDOWN ON MINORITIES?
Xinjiang's Uyghurs, along with the closely related Kazakh and Kyrgyz, are predominantly Turkic Muslims who are culturally, religiously, and linguistically distinct from China's dominant Han ethnic group.
Repression under Communist rule, particularly during the violent and xenophobic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, stirred deep animosity in Xinjiang toward the government, aggravated further by the migration of Han to the region and their domination of political and economic life.
Uyghurs established two short-lived independent governments in Xinjiang prior to the Communist Party's seizure of power, and the desire for self-rule endured and was nurtured by resentment against heavy-handed Chinese rule.
A protest movement began in the 1990s and remained at a relatively low level until simmering anger exploded in a 2009 riot in the regional capital of Urumqi that left an estimated 200 people dead.
More violence followed within Xinjiang and as far away as Beijing, prompting Chinese leader Xi Jinping to order a massive crackdown starting in 2014.