Preying Upon The Weak

Children Targeted By Rakhine Nationalist
(part of The Darkness Visible series)

In every genocide the weakest and most vulnerable are the most likely to be targeted for extermination. For those communities that find themselves the target of ethnic cleansing their children are preyed upon without mercy. The aim of this merciless method of slaughter is aimed at depriving the targeted community of their next generation. It is a tactic that is employed to ensure that the "undesirables" have not opportunity for a future.

When Stalin wanted to weaken his imagined foe in the Ukraine he commanded his forces to work the adults to death while starving the children. In doing this Uncle Joe damned an entire generation to a fate worse than death. He desired to starve them slowly as they watched their parents wither away and their grandparents perish. Stalin's long term goal however was to wipe out the children by taking the food right out of their mouths.

In Nazi Europe the children, especially the youngest, were often told to go off to the other line than their parents. It was a long and painful line that wandered off to the gas chambers or to freshly dug mass graves. Many SS soldiers took pride and using infants and babies as target practice or bayonet training. Hitler had set this part of the Final Solution in place so as to kill off the "undesirables" both here an now and in the years to come. Without children the "lesser races" could not raise up a generation that could be used to resist the Nazi cause. 

The Ustase behaved like rabid wolves when it came to the children of Jews and Roma in Croatia. Entire campaigns were launched to round up the vulnerable children into massive groups so that they could be led off like sheep to the slaughter. Ustase troops picked young children up by their limbs and bashed their heads onto rocks and concrete so as to save bullets. Roma children were held down while Ustase SS slit their throats. As with the rest of Hitler's followers, the Ustase knew that their actions were designed to slaughter the last hope of their victims. 

Burma has followed in Hitler's footsteps as they target the Rohingya of Myanmar. In Sabbay Goong, Northern Maung Daw, the Nasaka took into custody the mother of four children who were slaughtered by Rakhine extremist. Instead of going after the killers the Burmese security forces have decided to further degrade the mother. Once again Myanmar's government shows that they are willing to prey upon the weakest and most vulnerable of the Rohingya. 

The four children were;

• Noor Semon, 10 year old girl.
• Abdur Rahman, 8 year old boy.
• Rabina, 5 year old girl.
• Yasmine Ara, 2 year old girl. 

Their lives were ended simply because they were born Rohingya instead of Rakhine. Their assailants, thought to be members of the radical Rakhine terrorist group Arakan Liberation Party, are still free even as their little bodies remain unclaimed and most likely buried in unmarked graves. Their mother remains in captivity in a Burmese prison even after having been attacked and tied up by the men who killed her children.

This is what justice looks like in a government that openly practices a campaign of genocide against the Rohingya people. The slaughtered are blamed, the survivors are made to live in hellish conditions, and those who try to flee are killed without mercy.

So once again Alder's Ledge will ask... how many more need die? Why is the world remaining silent as innocent people perish every day?