Hawzah News Agency - In a new book, Pope Francis for the first time calls China's Muslim Uighurs a "persecuted" people, something human rights activists have been urging him to do for years.

In the wide-ranging "Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future," Francis also says the Covid-19 pandemic should spur governments to consider permanently establishing a universal basic income.

In the book, a 150-page collaboration with his English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, Francis speaks of economic, social and political changes he says are needed to address inequalities after the pandemic ends. It goes on sale on December 1.

He also says people who see wearing masks as an imposition by the state are "victims only in their imagination" and praises those who protested against the death of George Floyd in police custody for rallying around the "healthy indignation" that united them.

"I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi," he said in a section where he also talks about persecuted Christians in Muslim countries.

Faith leaders, activist groups and governments have said crimes against humanity and genocide are taking place against Uighurs in China’s remote Xinjiang region, where more than one million people are held in camps.

Last month, during a conference at the Vatican, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted China over its treatment of Uighurs.

Beijing has rejected the allegations as an attempt to discredit China, saying the camps are vocational education and training centres as part of counter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures.

Many commentators have said the Vatican was reluctant to speak out on the Uighurs earlier because it was in the process of renewing a controversial accord with Beijing on the appointment of bishops. The accord, which Pompeo urged the Vatican to abandon, was renewed in September.