Germany has called for a transparent investigation into "shocking" allegations of rights abuses targeting the Uyghur minority in China's Xinjiang, after a media consortium published leaked documents it said catalogued the violations.
In a phone call with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock pointed to "the shocking reports and new evidence of very serious human rights violations in Xinjiang", the German foreign ministry statement said.
Ms Baerbock "called for a transparent investigation" into the allegations, the statement added.
Several media outlets earlier Tuesday published leaked documents called the Xinjiang Police Files which appear to show thousands of photographs from inside Xinjiang's system of mass incarceration, including many detained Uyghurs.
The youngest was only 15 years old at the time of her detention, said the reports.
Germany's deputy chancellor Robert Habeck said in a statement the preservation of human rights "carried the most weight" and that the government had "changed its approach" in matters relating to China.
The Green politician, who is also economy minister, added that Germany was reducing its economic dependence on China.
The allegations came as UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet began her visit to the western region to try to shed light on the Uyghurs' plight, but she has faced criticism from the United States.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said in a tweet that Ms Bachelet "must take a hard look at these faces and press Chinese officials for full, unfettered access - and answers."
Campaigners have accused China's ruling Communist Party of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, part of a years-long crackdown the United States and lawmakers in other Western countries have labelled a "genocide".
China has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them the "lie of the century".
A police database obtained by AFP earlier this month listed the names and details of thousands of detained Uyghurs.
The United States has also voiced horror over the new files on the incarceration of China's Uyghur minority and said they showed that abuse was likely approved at the highest levels in Beijing.
"We are appalled by the reports and the jarring images," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
"It would be very difficult to imagine that a systemic effort to suppress, to detain, to conduct a campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity would not have the blessing - would not have the approval - of the highest levels of the PRC government," he said, referring to the People's Republic of China.
Young Muslim Uyghur boys in far northwest Xinjiang. Source: AAP
"We have and we continue to call on the PRC to immediately release all those arbitrarily detained people, to abolish the internment camps, to end mass detention, torture, forced sterilisation, and the use of forced labour," Mr Price said.
Adrian Zenz, an academic who has probed the treatment of the Uyghurs, published a leak of thousands of photos and official documents that shed new light on violent methods to enforce mass internment.
The files, parts of which have been verified by multiple news organisations including the BBC and Le Monde, also provided a window into life in detention facilities.
