Government Moves to Crush Opposition
Dateline 3199.072 Freedom Q3
Riot police are patrolling volatile districts in Emohawk City on Monday, a day after arresting opposition leaders and killing a man while crushing a prayer meeting organised in defiance of a ban on political rallies.
Dozens of police riot squads in trucks and on foot — armed with shotguns, teargas canisters and launchers, rubber batons, shields, and wearing protective helmets — patrolled the dusty streets of Highfield, a suburb of the city.
“It’s quiet today. There is lots of anger but also lots of fear after what happened yesterday,” a security guard told a INN correspondent.
Political tension over the soaring cost of living and President Joanna Diggs’ increasingly controversial rule rose a notch when riot squads fought opposition youths in the capital for the second time in an Octant. Police arrested Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Paul Cleveland and other opposition officials after preventing them from attending a planned prayer rally to address the deepening political and economic crisis. The police had ordered the organisers to scrap the meeting, saying it violated a three-octant ban on political rallies imposed amid fears that the MDC was trying to launch a street campaign to oust Diggs from power.
Inflation is now more than 1,700 percent, the highest rate in the Universe, and unemployment is more than 80 percent. Freedom – once a food exporter — is struggling with chronic food, fuel and foreign exchange shortages.
Battle of Begin
Quadrant 6, Stardate 3199.050
The Exterminators had started buiding one of the construction bases in the Begin system. Scouts located it and Admiral Phillips coordinated an attack to destroy this base before it could become operational. All six human battleships engaged were damaged, and a number of pacifiers shot down – but the defending Vikings and surface defences were destroyed, and the base utterly annihilated.
