US State Department spokesman talked about the grounds for the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's assessment that Beijing has committed the crime of genocide in the past tense.

Mr. Ned Price, the State Department’s top spokesman, was pushed on the Uyghur genocide during a Monday press briefing, when a reporter asked about the “ongoing genocide in China” and whether the Biden administration planned to “impose a cost on China” more than the Trump administration did.

The secretary has made clear that, in his judgment, genocide was committed against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The PRC also has committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs, who, of course, are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, and that includes imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution, Mr. Price said.

He repeated again using past tense: So, the secretary made clear that in his judgment, genocide was committed against Uyghurs, and we’re using that tense because the secretary was speaking in the context of his confirmation hearings at that moment in time.

Despite repeated questions on this issue Mr. Price refused to answer what is the current stance of the State Department.

"The secretary made clear that in his judgment, genocide was committed against Uyghurs." US State Department Spokesperson

Former US President Trump administration declared in one of its final acts that the Chinese government’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other religious minorities in Xinjiang in western China was a genocide, with the Trump State Department likening it to the Nazi Holocaust and contending the genocide was still happening. The document was also archived by the Biden administration.

The last time Biden's State Secretary spoke on that subject before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was still nominee.