The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has declared that China is committing “ongoing” genocide against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, less than 24 hours before leaving office. The incoming Biden team termed the persecution of Uighurs a genocide in August, and Anthony Blinken, nominated to succeed Pompeo, told a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday that he agreed with the new designation. Despite intense political pressure, the Trump administration did not make a formal declaration earlier because of concerns of its impact on trade talks. In the closing weeks of an administration it is customary for major policy moves to be left to its successor. Pompeo, who has widely reported aspirations to run for president in 2024, broke with that norm when he made the announcement on Tuesday, his last full day as secretary of state. In his statement, Pompeo said: “I have determined that the PRC [People’s Republic of China], under the direction and control of the CCP [Chinese Communist party], has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. “I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” he added. Pompeo’s declaration also accused China of crimes against humanity. “These crimes are ongoing and include: the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement,” the secretary of state’s declaration said, noting that the Nazis were accused of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials after the second world war. The declaration is not linked to any particular punitive measures. It called on “all appropriate multilateral and relevant juridical bodies, to join the United States in our effort to promote accountability for those responsible for these atrocities”. But the Trump administration has cut all ties with the international criminal court, one of the most important of those multilateral bodies. The Trump administration has already taken escalating measures against China in its final months, imposing sanctions on officials and companies for their activities in Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. Last week, the administration halted imports of cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang, a major global supplier of cotton, and has also blacklisted companies linked to forced labour in the region. Communist party officials linked to the Xinjiang anti-Uighur campaign have been targeted with US sanctions. “The United States government has said what many of us long knew: that Beijing is committing genocide against the Uighur people. Hopefully this will raise the cost to Wall Street and Hollywood of them continuing to ignore how some of their partnerships with the Chinese Communist party facilitate genocide in Xinjiang,” said Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a firm that quantifies corporate exposure to Beijing. “This is the loudest wake-up call yet to the global business community about the costs of partnering with firms in Xinjiang. The Biden administration may decide to walk back some of the Trump administration’s China policies. But I fully expect them to continue to hammer the CCP for the crimes it is committing in Xinjiang.” Eric Schwartz, the head of the Refugees International advocacy group welcomed the statement, but questioned why the same reasoning had not been applied to the persecution of the Rohingya population in Myanmar. “As reflected in numerous reports by journalists and scholars, the evidence of genocide is significant and substantial. The secretary’s statement underscores the importance of appropriate international investigations and prosecutions of officials for the crime of genocide in Xinjiang,” Schwartz said. “At the same time, I’m baffled and deeply concerned that Secretary Pompeo has declined to make a similar finding of genocide against the state of Myanmar for its vicious mass attacks against the Rohingya population beginning in August 2017. That issue has also been in front of the secretary, and there has been considerable support among his own experts at the state department for such a finding of genocide and crimes against humanity.” On the same day he issued the declaration on Chinese persecution of Uighurs, Pompeo drew criticism for a tweet on a government account denouncing multiculturalism. “Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms – they’re not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker,” the tweet said. Critics countered that the US was built on immigration and multiculturalism, and noted that in another recent tweet, the departing secretary of state had celebrated his own Italian roots. The Pompeo tweet was one of hundreds put out on the state department account in recent weeks, many of which have been politically tinged, lashing out at his critics, who he denounced as “elites” and “globalists”.