The U.S. secretary of state's accusation of genocide against China touches on a hot-button human rights issue between China and the West.

A Chinese official on Monday denied Beijing has imposed coercive birth control measures among Muslim minority women, following an outcry over a tweet by the Chinese Embassy in Washington claiming that government polices had freed women of the Uighur ethnic group from being “baby-making machines.”

More than 300 civil society groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Service for Human Rights, are urging the United Nations to set up an international watchdog to address human rights violations by the Chinese government, reports AP.