US has no right to criticise our minorities policies: China

China said on Thursday said that the United States had "no right to criticise its policies on ethnic minorities" after US lawmakers called for sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses against Muslims in Xinjiang region

Also Read: Crackdown has prevented Xinjiang being turned into 'China's Syria', says China paper

The group, led by Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Chris Smith, Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Executive Commission on China, made the call in a letter to the secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The US state department had said it was "deeply troubled" over China's alleged crackdown in  Xinjiang 

In the letter, the US lawmakers said Muslims in Xinjiang were "being subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitised surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored."

A UN report had earlier that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China were being held in "massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy."

The US lawmakers, in their letter, said as many as a million or more Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities were being detained in “political re-education” centres.

"No Chinese official or business complicit in what is happening ... should profit from access to the United States or the US financial system," the letter said.