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Buddhists in Myanmar have made their brutal attack on the Rohingya Muslim population. According to reports, people have been decapitated, cut to pieces, raped, and hundreds of homes have been burned down. As we read in one report:

Myanmar's blocking of vital aid to thousands of desperate civilians fleeing persecution is the latest in a countless number of atrocities committed against the Rohingya.

Considered the most persecuted people group in the world, more than 80,000 have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh since the latest outburst of fighting began just over a week ago.

Satellite pictures released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) show entire villages burnt to the ground with 700 homes destroyed in one area alone. Video footage shows children being beheaded and women and children beaten. Those who survived to escape tell of horrific 'massacres'.

Hamida Begum, a refugee who has left everything behind, told CNN: 'They are beating us, shooting at us and hacking our people to death.

'Many people were killed. Many women were raped and killed. We are very poor.'

Aid workers in refugee camps on the Bangladesh side of the border say they can't take any more in and the UN's humanitarian outfit is being blocked from reaching thousands more, trapped in forests and hills on the Myanmar side of the border.

As tens of thousands, many with bullet wounds, continue to flee into Bangladesh despite orders from the Bangladeshi government to stop them, the latest surge in persecution against the Rohingya is causing particular worry.

Similar violence less than a year ago saw 85,000 Rohingya flee across the border into Bangladesh bringing accounts of mass rape, torture and murder from inside their own Rakhine State.

And since 2012 100,000 have lived in refugee camps within Myanmar after clashes between Buddhist nationalists and Muslims forced them from their homes. Along with hundreds of thousands of others, they also stopped receiving crucial aid last week.

Humanitarian organisations are 'deeply concerned about the fate of thousands of people affected by the ongoing violence' in northern Rakhine, said Pierre Peron, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar.

'There is an urgent need to ensure that displaced people and other civilians affected by the violence are protected and are given safe access to humanitarian assistance including food, water, shelter, and health services,' he added.

'Humanitarian aid normally goes to these vulnerable people for a very good reason, because they depend on it,' he went on. 'For the sake of vulnerable people in all communities in Rakhine state, urgent measures must be taken to allow vital humanitarian activities to resume.'

But on top of the concerns about the mass loss of life amid accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing is the acknowledgement the violence was prompted by an attack from the Rohinyga's newly formed Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingyas have largely eschewed retaliation despite decades of persecution from the mainly Buddhist Myanmar military who do not recognise their place in the country. Stateless and refused citizenship, the Rohingya have suffered sustained attempts at ethnic cleansing with the Myanmar government justifying the attacks by saying they are combating 'terrorism'.

The largely Islamic people group have been victims of anti-Muslim sentiment fuelled by Myanmar's Buddhist leaders.

But the formation of ARSA last year adds weight to the government's illegitimate claim the Rohingyas are terrorists. This latest wave of attacks was provoked by ARSA's attack on a Myanmar police outpost, killing nine.

While the response has been disproportionate and more than 400 have died already, the outbreak of increasingly frequent attacks from Rohingya militants is a worrying sign for any hoping for peace in the region.

The violence in Myanmar is horrific, and there are many videos that show, and while I am not certain if it is truly who are the victims in these videos, they nonetheless illustrate how bloody the killing has become:

Now, I know that there will be people who will be praising the Buddhists in Myanmar for killing Muslims. The sad thing is that for one, it is easy to fall into the trap of supporting anyone who is killing Muslims, and secondly, by this, so many fall into the trap of supporting genocide. If you are going to support the Buddhists in Myanmar for their slaughter of the Rohingya Muslims, then you should also start hailing the Japanese imperial forces who slaughtered Muslims in their occupation of East Asia. For example, the Japanese slaughtered the Hui Muslims in China, and there is one horrific recording of this in which the Japanese slaughtered a Muslim landlord named Ha, and his wife, before raping and butchering the tenants:
On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1 year old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 2–3 men, and the younger by 3. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7–8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword.
These Japanese were Buddhist pagans, and they did such horrific atrocities. Are we going to praise the Japanese for this? Muslims have also been slaughtering Buddhists, and this too is evil. There must be balance in our approach. One of the greatest enemies of civilization is imbalance between charity and justice. We must have justice, yes, but we must also have charity. If we just have "charity," then there will be no charity, because we would have the evil mercy that gives license to the wicked. If we have solely justice, then we will have no justice, because we would then shed innocent blood. Charity and justice, one cannot live without the other.

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