Prague Sit-in

From Acw

Revision as of 07:08, 29 June 2006

Russia's Migration Crises begane some ten years earlier than the other powers, because of a particulary loud protest by a large mass of Liberian refugees trying to emigrate into the Ukraine.

Global Warming and Environmental Refugees

In 2114, the rate of Skin Cancer on Earth's equator spiked at one case in four people. The degradation of the atmosphere and the Greenhouse effect were slowly suffocating the planet, and turning the tropics into desert.

Liberia was a country that had been in trouble since its inception in the late 1800s. In 1994 it underwent a Communist revolution and sued for entry into the USSR. While that request was not granted due to the risk of inflaming American opinion (Liberia was originally an American creation), Liberia began to accept greater and greater aid packages from the Soviets.

By 2114 the country was effectively propped up by Soviet money. As the temperatures began to soar and crops began to die, Liberians began to emigrate en masse. At first they travelled in small groups, and though they preferred the USSR, they settled anywhere that would have them. Later on they exclusively chose Russia. This may have been due to the influence of Foreign Minister Kwame M'Boko, who advised the country constantly through radio and print media that 'Friend Russia' would come to their aid, or possibly just that the other powers were turning them away and Russia had always been associated with aid in the public's eyes.

Germany's policy at the time allowed for Untermenschen to travel across the country if they had a specific destination in mind and declared it at the border when they entered. Used to larger than usual population movements by 2114, the German border guards were somewhat careless.

Beginnings - Liberians in Limbo

As with most things, the Prague Sit-in started small. A group of 40 Liberian refugees were refused entry at the Soviet Border in late 2113, and were turned back to West Prague. The German guards would not let them back through the gates into Germany, and they camped within sight of both sides of the divided city, in the three-kilometer strip of no-man's land between the two sides of the Prague Wall.

The Soviet guards began turning away further African in droves. It is not known exactly why they were doing this, but all of them strayed back to the Liberian camps and began to camp there. Traffic across the border was larger than usual in 2114, as less noticable groups of refugees were moving across the globe as well. Neither side wanted to deal with the Liberians, who steadily started to grow as a community in Limbo.

The Powder Keg Heats Up

The problem was exacerbated when a number of Slavic refugees from German territories joined the Liberians in Limbo. By this point the crowd was an estimated 2000 strong - large enough to be noticed, but too large for the border guards to disperse, and anyway, where were they to go? Neither country would let them in. By this point it was too hard to find a quick solution, and diplomatic talks on the topic were fruitless. The Slavic refugees whipped up serious unrest amongst the Liberians, whose numbers were swellign daily. Other North African refugees, from Libya and Tunisia, themselves also recipients of Russian aid, were also pouring into the Prague No-mans' Land. by August 2114 the small town had grown to a large collection of tents, and there were some 30,000 people crammed into a 3km by 3km square. Traffic through the border was slowed to a crawl and the whoel thing was an international

The Match

The final straw came on the 8th of September, 2114, when one Piotr Slavcek (a Russian bastardisation of the Germanic last name for Slavic wards of the state) began loudly decrying the treatment of the refugees by both Germans and Russians. Witnesses who understood his particularly heavily-accented patois (he was speaking in English for the benefit of the cameras) recall that his abuse became quite heated. Passers-by, both living in the shanty-town and those crossing the border, began to gather around him and spur him on. The hubbub grew and grew, more voices being added to the mix, until finally a shot rang out. Slavcek had been standing on a car roof, and on System-wide television, he was seen to topple from the roof of the car, having taken a gunshot wound to the head.

No-one is sure who shot first, or which side they were from. Tempers were high in both camps; guards from both sides had been patrolling the No-Mans Land for months, and there had already been several altercations and a number of shooting incidents involving refugees, border guards and regular travellers. Regardless, even before Slavcek's body had hit the ground, automatic fire was everywhere. Guards on the walls of both sides were seen indiscriminately firing into the crowd. In an area that densley packed with human bodies, casualties were gigantic. somewhere close to 300 people were killed, including 4 German and 7 Soviet guards, and 17 unrelated civilians. A further 800 or more were wounded.

The 'firefight' went on for at least an hour, with guards shooting at anything that moved in the killing ground. Orders to cease fire came on the Soviet side first, followed by the German side twenty minutes later. Sporadic fire was heard for a further hour from the West Prague wall. As night fell, all the guards and travellers were removed from the No-Mans' Land, and the border closed on both sides.

Passive Resistance

Activity did not cease during the night. As dawn broke, it became clear that the remains of the shanty-town had been dismantled and moved to the edge of the minefields on either side, and the dead bodies from the preceeding day's fight were poiled alongside them. Teh guards were greeted by the sight of the 40,000-strong throng sitting silently in a mass, completely blocking the border road, effectively closing the major land border between two of the solar system's pre-eminent powers.

Initial attempts to move the crowd were unsuccessful. Guards with loudspeakers, guards threatening to fire, manhandling individual protesters out of the way, all elicited no reaction. The stony-faced crowd remained impassive. The Germans ordered a squad of soldiers to open fire at the protesters, but they had already been through hell. A number were killed, but the remainder did not move. Eventually a bulldozer was brought up, but noone could be found who would drive it through the crowd. AN impasse had been reached.

The man who had orchestrated this was one Arthur Thandiswa, a Liberian socialist who had become somewhat influential in the camp. He had been a close associate of Slavcek, who it emerged later was a Slavic nationalist escaping Germany. While they had not orchestrated the resistance themselves, they had been working on the sit-in plan together. Whichever guard fired that shot could not have played more squarely into their hands.

The Aftermath

General Secretary Chernenko