Oklusi News Central

OOC: Welcome to Oklusi News Central! In this thread I will post newsbits from Oklusia. This will primarily be a linking thread.

by Eneko Tzurruka
28 May 2022 ~ 0917h
DEVA (Oklusia) – the Oklusi Constituent Assembly has finally selected a flag to represent the country and its peoples.

Constituent Assembly
The Oklusi Constituent Assembly (Santonian: Assemblée constituante oclusée, Eukluzera: Ebatzar jendeala oklusera, Kernøsk: Okluske Grundlovgivende Forsamling, Okluski: Ustanovchi zbory oklusyi, Grescio: Asenblea costituente oclusca) is a deliberative body tasked to draft a new constitution for the Oclusian Republic. The 300 members of the constituent assembly were chosen by secret ballot in popular assemblies last year with universal suffrage. The assembly is meant to represent all ethnic groups, social classes, and religions, with members coming from all walks of life. The organisation of the elections and the convening of the constituent assembly were done under the auspices of the Santonian-led multinational Oklusi Peacekeeping and Stabilisation Mission (OPSM). To maintain legality, the authorisation of the constituent assembly was approved in the last session of the former Parliament of Oklusia in 2020, before the Oklusi government imploded and the country descended into anarchy.


Flag
Yesterday, the Constituent Assembly approved a provisional flag for Oklusia, doing away with the old flag that was deemed ’representative of Oklusia’s colonial past and vyluchennya and bereizketa’. The flag was designed by Grescian representative Alboin Chiereghin (a painter) and Kernø delegate Yyonas Elding (an online content creator). The provisional flag is set to be approved in the referendum together with the constitution that the assembly will be finishing.

The provisional flag consists of white elements on a light blue field, colours traditionally associated with peace. The centre features five five-pointed stars, interconnected at their points, representing the five peoples of Oklusia: the Eukluzi, the Kernø, the Ølmen, the Okluski, and the Grescians. The five-pointed stars create a pentagon in the centre, symbolising the new country they are creating. A white “ring of peace” encloses the stars, signalling the unity, indivisibility, and harmony of the peoples.

Adoption
The flag was adopted overwhelmingly by the Constituent Assembly, with all of the ethnic groups voting for the flag. The five-star flag has also seen adoption in the online and offline communities ever since it was popularised by Chiereghin and Elding.

Meanwhile, the Assembly’s work on the constitution is still in progress, with major areas currently under discussion including electoral systems, protection of minority rights, secularism, and language. A major point of discussion is the transition of Okluski from the Arcanstotskan alphabet to the Umbrial one, which is being pushed by Okluski Messianist delegates. The Assembly has had major accomplishments in drafting a bill of rights for Oklusis, largely based on the 1792 Santonian Declaration of the Rights of Persons and of the Citizen.

translation by Garbiñe Aretzpakotxaga
28 May 2022 ~ 1058h



OOC Note: Approved by @Predice .

by Lambert Oberreiter
10 Aug 2022 ~ 0822h
DEVA (Oklusia) – the Messianist religion is gaining wild popularity and thousands of adherents in Oklusia in the past few months, in stark contrast to the vyluchennya/bereizketa (apartheid) era of the past few decades. According to church officials, baptisms and conversions into the two fast-growing Messianist churches in Oklusia, the Courantist Church (Sion) and the Santonian National Church, had numbered in the hundreds of thousands, not millions – not an insignificant number in the small country.

Centuries of Messianist oppression
The Messianist church had been oppressed for centuries in what is now Oklusia. While the Courantist Church was the State Church in the pre-Fascist War independent state Grescia before the collegamento (Anschluss), it was oppressed for centuries in the colony of Andrennian North Meterra. The native Eukluzi people are traditionally Courantists, with some folk beliefs mixed in. It was not enough for the then-Kernø dominated colonial administration. The suppression and cultural extermiantion of the Eukluzi waxed and waned depending on how far the Kernø dominated colonial administration could go; during the UKAG era, when Andrenne was united with Courantist Goyanes, the Kernø colonial administration was hamstrung with any possible reaction from Gojanesstad or Goyanean North Meterra (present-day Yalkan). There were some Andrennian administrators who actively stopped the Kernø persecution of the Eukluzi. However, during other times, the Andrennian administrators turned a blind eye or even encouraged the Kernø treatment of the Eukluzi, especially if it made the colony profitable.

This meant that Oklusi history was peppered with persecution against the Eukluzi and/or Courantists, especially against the so-called ‘blackbloods’. The last notable incident involved the impalement of four Courantist Eukluzi priests in the coastal town of Getaria/Getaryja in 1944.

After the Fascist War, Andrennian North Meterra and Predicean-occupied Grescia were amalgamated into a trust territory assigned to Arcanstotska, another pagan nation with strong anti-Messianist tendencies. While Arcanstotska itself was more liberal, its settlers in its new colony of Oklusia were more conservative. The settlers used religion and proselytization as a reason and means for subjugating the native Eukluzi, especially when taking away their lands. A notorious 1978 law passed by the Okluski colonial administration stated that a Courantist may own no more than fifteen acres of land, which led to numerous civil disturbances in Oklusia proper and a general uprising in Grescia. Oklusia proper was subdued with difficulty, while Grescians and Ølmen were exempted from the law. As under Andrennian colonial administration, the Zaldrist Okluski, joined by the largely-Thaunic Kernø, waves of religious persecution battered the Courantist Eukluzi, such as when a Eukluzi preacher was crucified upside-down in the village of Soraluze by Zaldrist Okluski mobs in 2017.

Other Messianists
Aside from the Grescians, there were other Messianists in a curious grey area in Oklusia. One group included the members of the Santonian National Church (SNC), where the religion was brought by missionaries from beyond the Ands mountains. Catholiques, as members of the SNC are known, had been present in small numbers in Oklusia since the 15^th century, and had drawn members from Eukluzis, Kernøs, and even recent Okluskis. The successive Andrennian colonial administrations, Arcanstotskan colonial administrations, and Okluski governments did not persecute the catholiques as much as Courantists, for fear of provoking next-door Saintonge. Saintes had a history of lodging diplomatic protests to Miita, Siloyev, or Deva when it gets uncomfortable with Oklusia’s treatment of catholiques and sometimes even Courantists. In a seeming departure from Santonian non-intervention in other countries’ internal affairs, the government of Santonian Prime Minister Marc-Childéric Battiston sent a communiqué to Miita decrying the persecutions and asking Andrenne to intervene in the colonial administration to treat its Messianist minorities better during the Eukluzi uprising of 1918. It was what spurred Saintonge to pass Loi Flahault II in 1919, which prioritises Messianists and Courantists for immigration into the country.

It also meant that the SNC was a safety valve for Oklusia as Eukluzis converted to the SNC for less oppression at home and for the promise of eventual immigration to wealthier Saintonge.

Even more significant were three Messianist ethnic groups that the dominant ethnicity adopted as part of their own during the colonial period. Laurenist Andrennians also settled in Andrennian North Meterra, and with it some of the religious strife from their Andrennian homeland. Occasional riots would spring up between the Thaunic and Laurenist settlers, but when it comes to the Courantist Eukluzi, the two settler groups would largely cooperate against the land's native peoples. After the Andrennian Enlightenment of the early 1800s, conflict between the two settler groups would largely dissipate and they were absorbed into the Kernø ethnic group. This meant that there are a group of Kernøs who profess Laurenist Messianism. However, there is a group of Courantist Kernøs.

The Courantist Alemans were invited by the Kernø-dominated colonial administration since the 16^th century to help settle the ‘wildlands’ and colonise the Eukluzi lands. While some of these Alemans converted to Thaunicca and assimilated into the Kernø, many stayed Courantist and formed a distinct subgroup amongst their Gotic hosts: the Ølmen. Like the Laurenist Andrennian settlers, the Kernø treated the Ølmen as part of their ethnic group and did not suppress their religion as much as the Kernø did with the Eukluzi.

The Ølmen did not experience sustained tensions with their Eukluzi neighbours, as they had a different method of settlement: the Ølmen settlers bought the land from the Eukluzi instead of seizing them outright like the Kernø did. Sometimes the Eukluzi simply gave the land to the Ølmen, in return for the Eukluzi being allowed to stay in the land with the Ølmen settlers. Consequently, the Ølmen found a common cause with the Eukluzi, rather than with the Kernø, who treated the Ølmen as juniors within their ethnic group.

Ølman author Maximilian Reimer wrote in 1888: “[The persecutions] are not actually against Courantism, but against the Eukluzi and their culture, which includes Courantism and their primitive folk beliefs. It was about wiping out the Eukluzi, but the valiant and stubborn Eukluzi stayed true to their roots and their native land.”

Reimer’s observations proved prescient even with the change in administration. The Okluski, the descendants of Arcanstotskan settlers, also set about with persecution of Courantists. They found themselves as a Szlavic minority lording over a vastly more numerous population of native Eukluzi, Gotic Kernø and Ølmen, and Umbrial Grescians. They recruited the anti-Messianist Kernø and put them in the middle of the sociopolitical hierarchy to control the Eukluzi masses. Still, there was yearning for more Szlavic settlement in Oklusia.

In 1998, Severogotia, a Szlavic nation just across the Ember Sea, started the state-sanctioned persecution of the Courantist Church and its members. Instead of finding common cause with the anti-Courantist movement, the Okluski government of Pribyslav Brutskyy threw open Oklusia’s doors to the fleeing Courantist Severogotians. Brutskyy thought that these refugees, which included much of the country’s elite – the nobility and business leaders – would bolster Oklusia’s Szlavic population against that of the Eukluzis, the Gotics, and the Grescians. The Okluski government treated them as Okluskis – at the top of the social and ethnic pyramid.

The Okluski government thought that the refugees would bring their riches and investments in; but the richer refugees stayed away from poverty-stricken Oklusia and instead exiled themselves in wealthier, more developed nations. It meant that the Severogotian refugees in Oklusia – numbering around 700,000 between 1998 to 2010 – were mostly the middle classes or the poor Courantist Szlavs. The massive influx meant that the Zaldrist Okluski were now actually outnumbered by the Courantist Okluski.

“The refugees were put on top of the social ladder. The initial thought was ‘Wow this is great, this is just like Severogotia!’” said refugee community leader Bronislav Matishyn, now a member of the Oklusi Constituent Assembly. “But then people realised that this privilege was off the backs of the Eukluzis, who were mostly Courantists too. People were like… ‘wait a minute, the repression done to us is being done here too?’ And so the refugee community woke up and got organised.” These Courantist Okluski teamed up with the Ølmen, the Eukluzi, and the Grescians during the Troubles of the late 2010s, defending the country against apartheid, pirates, and anarchy.


Rapid Proselytisation
Messianism is enjoying a massive revival in Oklusia. “People who abandoned Courantism or Messianism to avoid official discrimination are re-embracing it now,” said Txomin Urkia, a social scientist at the University of Deva. “Even the Kernø – who risked being re-classified during the previous years if they get baptised to Messianism – are converting in massive numbers.”

The Courantist dioceses that cover Oklusia were not able to provide a definite number for baptisms in the past three years, but the Courantist Diocese of Urruña/Urrunja in northern Oklusia said that the conversions were ‘massive, sometimes even whole villages’. This was probably in reference to the Kernø village of Smelding (population: 302), whose inhabitants converted en masse to Courantism on January 2022.

Some estimates that even the Kernø ethnic group might become Courantist-majority in a few years, even without counting the Ølmen as part of the group.

Pagan flight
With the rising Messianist fervour in Oklusia, many pagans – Zaldrist and Thauniccs – have left the country for Arcanstotska or Andrenne, respectively. Many cited fears of backlash from the previously-oppressed Courantists as their reason for leaving. “I don’t want to live in a Courantist country,” commented Vladimir, who refused to give his complete name. “They will introduce stupid holidays for their nailed man-god.”

“I fear that they will ban pagan worship like what we did to their worship,” said a Kernø who immigrated to Andrenne.

While the new Oklusian administration took pains to assure the pagan minority that there will be freedom of religion in Oklusia, others weren’t so sure. “I’m not going to believe that until I see it in the constitution they’re making,” added Vladimir. “For now, I’m staying here in Siloyev.”

“Now that their privilege had been taken away, they suddenly realise how much they used their religion to oppress the majority of Oklusia,” observed Eukluzi radio commentator Josune Goñi.

“Moving away from paganism is seen as a dissociation from that awful heritage,” said Urkia. “You can’t easily change the language you are speaking, you can't easily change the colour of your skin, but you can certainly change the god you are worshipping.”

“Paganism in Oklusia is a tool of oppression, of privilege,” wrote Reimer in 1895 in his banned novel Die Hölle der Freuden (“The Hell of Delights”).

Goñi: “We hope that will be in the past tense in Oklusia soon.”

translation by Garbiñe Aretzpakotxaga
10 Aug 2022 ~ 1125h



OOC Note: Post approved by @Predice @Andrenne @Arc @Yalkan and @Pikabo . Thanks!