China has replaced the Communist Party chairman in the Xinjiang province, who was in charge of monitoring the security campaign on Uyghurs, the region's ethnic minority group, and other Muslims.
Chen Quanguo, 66, will reportedly be replaced by Ma Xingrui, the governor of Guangdong province, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday.
Ma has a background in the aerospace industry before becoming governor of Guandong.
Chen is widely believed to be the key person in charge of Xinjiang's security crackdown, Reuters said.
The United States has accused China of genocide against the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority population indigenous to Xinjiang.
The news agency did not disclose any other information about Chen's new position.
Over 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities are believed to be imprisoned in forced labor camps throughout the region, researchers said. China, on the other hand, has refuted the charges, claiming that the camps are intended to teach work skills and combat radicalization.
Last year, the U.S. sanctioned Chen for his role in Uyghur human rights abuses. Mike Pompeo, then-secretary of state, dubbed it the "stain of the century."
Chen began conducting a systematic monitoring, imprisonment, and brainwashing program in Xinjiang following his arrival in the area, targeting Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities, Pompeo said in a statement.
In Tibet, which was conquered by the People's Republic of China in 1950, Chen is credited for restoring order following pro-independence demonstrations and a series of Buddhist monk self-immolations.
In 2017, he was elected to the Communist Party's governing Politburo. The action was widely interpreted as a reward for restoring stability in Xinjiang.
Chen went on to say that the XPCC was directly involved in putting these procedures in place.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan law on Thursday that prohibits imports from the region unless people or businesses can establish that the materials were produced without the use of forced labor, prompting a furious Chinese response.
The Chinese government condemned the limitations on Xinjiang imports imposed to punish China for human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities in the province on Friday.
During a press briefing on Friday, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that the restriction maliciously denigrates the human rights situation in China's Xinjiang region "in contempt of facts and truth."
China denies the allegations of mistreatment. It has referred to the camps as "vocational centers," and stated in late 2019 that all convicts had "graduated."
