After Miami Mayor and Republican presidential candidate Francis Suarez's radio appearance went viral on Monday morning when he asked "What's a Uyghur?" he took to Twitter to clarify the faux pas.

Countries across the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others, have characterized China's treatment of its Uyghur population as genocide.

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Suarez, running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, was asked about the concern by radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday. "Penultimate question, mayor. Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?" Hewitt asked.

"The what?" the mayor responded before asking, "What's a Uyghur?"

The clip immediately began circulating on social media, drawing comparisons to 2016 Libertarian candidate for president Gary Johnson's viral moment in which he asked an interviewer, "What is Aleppo?" To the interviewer's shock, Johnson was unaware of the Syrian city at the center of a refugee crisis due to a civil war in the country.

Suarez addressed the clip in a Monday tweet, blaming the mishap on Hewitt's pronunciation. "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," he wrote.

"I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That’s on me," he continued.

At the end of the Hewitt interview, Suarez told the host, "You gave me homework, Hugh. I’ll look at what a, what was it, what did you call it, a weeble?"

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

"I will talk about — I will search 'Uyghurs.' I’m a good learner. I’m a fast learner," the mayor replied.

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The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim and Turkic-speaking people that mainly live in the Xinjiang Province of China. Anywhere from 800,000 to 2 million Uyghurs have been detained in the region since 2017, according to estimates by U.S. officials and researchers cited by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The U.S. enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which requires "the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to develop a strategy for supporting enforcement of the prohibition on the importation of goods into the United States manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in the People's Republic of China, especially from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Xinjiang."