Miami mayor and GOP presidential hopeful Francis Suarez says Uyghurs stumble was due to pronunciation

By Sydney Kashiwagi

(CNN) — Miami Mayor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Francis Suarez reiterated that he fumbled over a question regarding the plight of Uyghur Muslims because he is used to a different way of saying their name.

“I was definitely caught off guard,” Suarez said Wednesday on “CNN This Morning.” Suarez told CNN’s Pamela Brown that he is “used to the Turkish pronunciation of the word” adding “it’s spelled phonetically and a little differently.”

In an interview last month on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, the Miami mayor indicated he was unfamiliar with the plight of Uyghur Muslims, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in China whose treatment has been the subject of worldwide condemnation for years.

“Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?” Hewitt asked.

Suarez responded, “The what?”

At the end of the interview, Suarez told Hewitt, “You gave me homework, Hugh. I’ll look at – what was it? What’d you call it, a weeble?”

Following his gaffe on the radio show, Suarez denied to CNN that he was unaware of the Uyghur situation and the human rights abuses China is accused of committing.

“Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China. They are being enslaved because of their faith. China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used,” Suarez said in a statement to CNN at the time.

China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims has been the subject of a great deal of international condemnation. In 2021, the State Department officially determined China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjing. The following year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found China’s treatment of Uyghurs constituted “crimes against humanity.”

China denies allegations of such human rights abuses in Xinjiang. It has insisted that its reeducation camps are necessary for preventing religious extremism and terrorism in the area, which is home to about 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority that speak a language closely related to Turkish and have their own distinct culture.

The situation has reached the two most recent presidents of the United States. Then-President Donald Trump in 2020 signed a bill that aimed to punish China and officials responsible for carrying out torture and human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim population through sanctions, including asset blocking, visa revocation and ineligibility for entry into the United States.

President Joe Biden also signed a law in 2021 banning imports from China’s Xinjiang region in response to the country’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

“I think the US president has to address fundamental human rights abuses, whether they be religious persecution, whether they be putting people like the Uyghurs … in concentration camps, where they’re potentially shot if they try to escape, where they’re being indoctrinated,” Suarez continued to say Wednesday when asked how he would address tensions between the Uyghurs and China. “I mean, that should all be part of our foreign policy.”

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CNN’s Kit Maher, Shawna Mizelle and David Wright contributed to this report.