As the world recognizes the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, the vows of “never again” after the Holocaust’s horrors became known threaten to be swallowed up by religious persecution against Christians, Muslims and other groups, said panellists at a Feb. 5 forum at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“The unthinkable is possible, and everyone must act,” said Naomi Kikoler, director of the museum’s Simon-Skjodt Centre for the Prevention of Genocide and panel moderator.

Omer Kanat, chairman of the World Uyghur Congress’s executive committee, said the crisis for Uighur Muslims began in 2017 as China’s crackdown on the minority ethnic group intensified, calling the “eradication of Uighur culture” an “extermination.”

There are 1.8 million to 3 million Uighurs in “concentration camps,” Kanat said. “The statements of government officials are going in this direction: ‘We cannot sustain the weeds among the crops. We have to spray a chemical, and kill all of them.’” He added not only are Uighurs within China traumatized by the ongoing repression, but Uighurs living outside China are despondent over “their inability to help their family back home.”