Cybersecurity researchers said they have found evidence of Chinese spyware in Uyghur-language apps that can track the location and harvest the data of Uyghurs living in China and abroad.

Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim minority predominantly in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, where a recent U.N. report said Beijing may have committed crimes against humanity.

China last month rejected the U.N. report on human rights violations against ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and called it "false."

In a video statement, Chinese envoy to the U.N. Zhang Jun said they reject the U.N.'s "so-called Xinjiang-related assessment."

The United States and lawmakers in other Western countries say China's treatment of the Uyghurs amounts to genocide.

A Thursday report by San Francisco-based cybersecurity firm Lookout claims that since 2018, multiple Uyghur-language Android apps have been found to be infected with two strains of spyware linked to Chinese state-backed hacker groups.

They include dictionaries, religious apps, maps and even pirated versions of WhatsApp available on third-party stores or shared on Uyghur-language channels on Telegram.

They were not available on the official Google Play store, which is blocked in China, leading Chinese users to use third-party app stores.

The spyware enabled hackers to collect sensitive data including a user's location, contacts, call logs, text messages and files, the report said, and could also take photos and record calls.