Iain Duncan Smith has called for the Chinese US Embassy to be banned from Twitter after it claimed Uyghur women forced into detention camps had been ‘emancipated in their minds’.

China is accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Muslims in detention camps in its western region of Xinjiang.

IDS reacted with fury after the embassy Twitter account shared a news story from the China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

The story claimed a report had found “decreases in the birth-rate and natural population growth rate in the Xinjiang Uygur [sic] autonomous region in 2018 resulted from the eradication of religious extremism”.

The story further claimed the falling birth-rate was not caused by "forced sterilization" of Uyghur women, “as repeatedly claimed by some Western scholars and politicians”.

The Chinese Embassy tweet sharing the story, read: “Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines.”

Chingford and Woodford Green MP Iain Duncan Smith called for Twitter to shut the account down saying: “It’s violent propaganda and blatant fake news against millions of Uyghur women and children.

He added: “How disgusting of the US Chinese Embassy to attempt to justify the progressive eradication of the Uyghur people.”

The former leader of the Conservative party also shared a Telegraph article detailing how the UK Government bought £150m of PPE from Chinese firms linked to Uyghur human rights abuses.

In September of last year, The Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated there were about 380 detention facilities in the Xinjiang region and that more were being built despite claims from the Chinese Government the programme was winding down.

The Chinese Government claims its aim is to tackle poverty and religious extremism in Xinjiang.

In 2018, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver said "at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens" were imprisoned in detention centres, which he described as "concentration camps".

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

For more breaking news, local headlines and features, ‘like’ our Facebook page.

We also have a Twitter account: @ELondonGuardian

Follow us to keep up-to-date with news in Waltham Forest and Redbridge.