Republican Candidate Suarez: ‘What’s a Uyghur?’

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who is also a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, suffered an embarrassing foreign policy gaffe on Tuesday when he indicated that he was unaware of the persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.

“Penultimate question, Mayor. Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked on his syndicated show.

“The what?” Suarez responded.

“The Uyghurs,” Hewitt repeated.

“What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked.

“OK, we’ll come back to that,” the host said.

He then chided Suarez, saying, “You’ve got to get smart on that.”

Commenting on the interview afterward, Hewitt tweeted that Suarez “was pretty good for a first conversation on air about national security — except for the huge blind spot on the Uyghurs. ‘What’s a Uyghur?’ is not where I expect people running for president to say when asked about the ongoing genocide in China.”

Suarez took to Twitter hours later to claim he was confused by Hewitt’s pronunciation during the exchange.

“Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China,” the Miami mayor wrote. “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. That’s on me.”

According to the U.S. State Department, the communist Chinese government has used a national counterterrorism law and a regional counter-extremism policy to detain approximately 1 million Uyghurs in reeducation camps throughout the northwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Many Uyghurs have been tortured and systematically raped by their Chinese captors in these detention facilities, according to published reports.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in January 2022 that China has committed crimes against humanity and genocide for its treatment of the Muslim minority group, according to the New York Post.

Suarez, 45, became the first Hispanic candidate running when he joined the crowded Republican field last month.

He has taken heat from some Republicans for his admission that he never cast a ballot for former President Donald Trump.

“I think I’m the only candidate running who didn’t vote for him in 2016 and 2020,” Suarez told Hewitt. “I wrote in a Republican in 2016 — [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio — and I wrote in [former Vice President] Mike Pence in 2020.”