WASHINGTON D.C. (CNN) — During a talk on CNN last night, the new occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, rejected the idea of an Uyghur genocide by China, invoking a difference in "cultural norms".

Despite the fact that both the Trump administration and his own have called Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs as “genocide”, Biden oddly backed down after being questioned on the issue. He refused to denounce the genocide by China, claiming that the systematic oppression of minorities by the communist country was merely a different cultural norm:

If you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.

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I’m not gonna speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in the western mountains of China […] culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.

More than one million Uyghurs and other minorities are being held against their will in re-education camps throughout the Xinjiang region. Reports began to emerge of forced sterilizations and systematic gang rapes and torture of women by guards.