The French National Assembly Thursday adopted a resolution condemning Chinese political and humanitarian crimes against China’s Uyghur Muslim minority. The resolution calls on the French government to formalize its stance on the genocidal nature of the crisis, a position already taken by the United States, Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands.

According to the resolution, France’s executive department still has yet to call the situation a “genocide,” having only referred to it as an “institutionalized system of repression” in 2021. The document goes on to list Chinese actions against the Uyghur’s that justify such a categorization, including heightened surveillance both domestic and abroad, forced sterilization, internment in work camps, and an effort to erase Uyghur cultural heritage. Altogether, the Chinese policy amounts to “a comprehensive and systematic state policy intended to destroy the Uyghurs as a group in their own right.”

The Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people native to central Asia, form the ethnic majority of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China’s largest province. Annexed to China in 1949, the region is the primary target of President Xi Jinping’s 2014 “People’s War on Terror,” the declaration that coincided with the onset of China’s oppressive policies. The French resolution states that Chinese policy in the region intensified in 2016 when Chen Quanguo was installed as its highest-ranking Communist Pary official.

In November, Human Rights Watch accused sponsors of the upcoming Winter Olympics with supporting the genocide. In December, President Biden signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bill that prevents the importation of goods produced in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

This resolution by the French parliament is likely to strain relations with Bejing as they prepare to welcome French athletes on February 4th.