GOP presidential candidate Francis Suarez: 'What's a Uyghur?'

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez appeared to draw a blank when he was asked on a radio show Tuesday about Uyghurs, a persecuted minority group in China.

"What's a Uyghur?" Suarez asked conservative host Hugh Hewitt on Hewitt's radio show when he was questioned about whether he would talk about Uyghurs in his presidential campaign.

"You've got to get smart on that," Hewitt replied.

Suarez circled back to the topic at the end of the interview.

"You gave me homework, Hugh. I’ll look at what a, what was it, what did you call it, a Weeble?" Suarez asked, laughing.

"The Uyghurs. You really need to know about the Uyghurs, mayor," Hewitt said. "You’ve got to talk about it every day, OK?"

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Suarez responded that he would search and talk about them.

"I’m a good learner. I’m a fast learner," he said.

After the interview, Suarez said he simply misunderstood Hewitt's pronunciation of the word.

"Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China," Suarez said in a statement. "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."

In a foreign policy speech about China in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley responded to Suarez's remarks.

"I mean, genocide — we promised never again to look away from genocide, and it’s happening right now in China," she said. "And no one is saying anything because they’re too scared of China."

Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim minority in China's western region who have faced widespread persecution by the Chinese government in what the U.S. government has designated a genocide.

More than 1 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups have been arbitrarily arrested and detained by the government since 2017, according to the State Department. Beijing has referred to the camps as "vocational education and training centers."

Multiple presidential candidates emphasize toughness on China rhetoric as part of their foreign policy perspectives.

President Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a "dictator" last week, and former President Donald Trump said in a speech that he "stood up to China like no administration has ever done before."

Haley tweeted Tuesday, "Communist China is the greatest threat to American security and prosperity, by far."

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said in May that "I think we are in the era of a new Cold War, without any question," when he was asked whether he sees China as America’s enemy.

Suarez launched a long-shot presidential campaign in a quickly widening GOP field this month. He was first elected mayor of Miami in 2017 and won re-election in 2021.