The Morrison government has called on China to allow the United Nations into the western province of Xinjiang to investigate allegations of human rights abuses against more than 1 million Uighur Muslim people believed to be held in mass detention facilities.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne made the call on Thursday after the BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, released a report with a series of accounts from former detainees and a guard who said they experienced or witnessed systematic rape and torture inside the facilities.