The new UN rights chief said Friday he would follow up on bombshell findings by his predecessor of serious rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity in China's Xinjiang region.

Volker Turk, who took over as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in October, said the report released by Michelle Bachelet on August 31 was "very important".

"It has highlighted very serious human rights concerns. And my focus is on following up on the recommendations that are contained in the report," he told a press conference in Geneva.

Bachelet published the long-awaited report just minutes before her term ended, after facing significant pressure from Beijing to withhold the document, and also from Western countries and rights groups to release it.

It detailed a string of rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, urging the world to pay "urgent attention" to the human rights situation in the far-western region.

The report highlighted "credible" allegations of widespread torture, arbitrary detention and violations of religious and reproductive rights.

And it brought UN endorsement to long-running allegations by campaigners and others, who accuse Beijing of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims and forcibly sterilising women.

Beijing vehemently rejected the charges and accused the UN of becoming a "thug and accomplice of the US and the West".

China, which insists it is running vocational training centres in the region to counter extremism, launched an all-out offensive to convince countries to dismiss the report.

And it successfully managed to thwart an unprecedented effort in October to put the report on the UN Human Rights Council agenda to be debated.

Asked how he would proceed on the matter, Turk stressed Friday that "we will, and I will personally, continue engaging with the authorities.

"I am very determined to do so.

"Hope springs eternal for changes."

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