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

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…