China on Friday took issue with a UN report that called on Beijing to release ethnic Uighurs detained "under the pretext" of counterterrorism, saying its findings had "no factual basis".

Up to one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in internment camps in China's far western Xinjiang region, according to estimates cited by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which said it was "alarmed" by the reports of discrimination. "There is no official data on how many people are in long-term detention or who have been forced to spend varying periods in political 're-education camps' for even non-threatening expressions" of their Muslim faith, the committee's report said.