Moderators: (Shireroth) Prefect of Shirekeep, (Shireroth) Steward, (Shireroth) Kaiser
[Shirekeep, 07.III.1660] The Shirekeep City Guard used tear gas and resorted to a vicious massed cudgelling to disperse students of the Metzler University who were marching to the Imperial Judex to register a complaint against Imperialist groups who had barged into campus to protest the presence of a portrait of Lachmodan's secessionist leader Maksym Hadjimehmetov.
The students then staged a sit-in against the treatment meted out to them by cudgellers, witnesses reported.
The paper reported that the Imperialist mob allegedly shouted N&H/IRP slogans against the late Agha Hadjimehmetov and asked the university to remove the portrait from one of the student halls of resident within 48 hours or face unspecified consequences.
The controversy began when the Imperial Mother, Liv Dravot-Osman, wrote to the JMU vice chancellor seeking a justification for Hadjimehmetov’s portrait, which has been hanging in the university's Hall of Residence for Laqs since 1568.
Aslan Axwemghwet Usmani, a spokesman for the Lach Hall of Residence, said the portrait would not be removed saying it came up as part of a protocol that the JMU students’ union accorded to all great leaders of the nations of the Imperial Republic who had visited the campus.
A JMU spokesman offered the following comment: “In the afternoon, right wing activists reached the university gate, raised objectionable slogans, burnt effigies and manhandled half-a-dozen security guards. They came face-to-face with JMU students. About a dozen JMU students, including the student union president, were injured by the actions of cudgellers following their march towards the police station.”
Captain-General Pritchard, commander of the city guard, however rejected the allegation that the cudgellers had not done anything against the Imperialist groups and targeted the protesting students instead. “In fact while we exercised restraint the students targeted us with stones,” he said.
Hadji Memeltov, Folksraad Spokesman for the Allied Union of Tolerated Minorities, condemned the violence as "yet another instance of brutality by a sclerotic and paranoid Imperial Government that is terrified of losing control". Memeltov went on to explain, "from Sansabury to Merensk, to Modan Hamlet, and to Shirekeep, authorities that rely upon devil worship and scaled hierarchies of oppression are terrified by the example set by the Free Lach of Inner Benacia. Because of the example set by our brothers in Bagegeniśort (Stonetree) we know now that it is possible to aspire to greater things than mere survival under this Kalirion yoke. We know that the day will come when we recover our ancient dignity and liberties and that all the gravtanks in the world will be powerless against the resolve of our united people. Because of this, those who feign to be our masters wish to tear down all the reminders of our glorious past as if that would make us content to languish as denizens or subjects - hence their sudden indignation at a dusty portrait which has hung undisturbed for more than a century."
[Shirekeep, 20.V.1664] The leader of the Modani Circuit of Benacia, Harry Payne, former Magister of the Palatini Corps, has been killed in a blast that tore through a public house close to the Tempus Keep in southern Shirekeep.
Harry Payne, 40, had previously been named Archon of the Benacian Circuit by the Prince of Modan in spite of being detained by the Chamber of the Crypteia at the Vanyam Rehabilitation Facility on Raikoth at the time. The circumstances of how Aqa Payne came to be at liberty at the time of his death is not immediately apparent. The Ministry of Military Affairs confirmed his death and said that the Magister of the Order of the Decima, Viscount Verion, was also injured alongside four officers of the Order of Sentinels when an explosive device went off outside the Wayfearers' Inn, one of the few structures in Lichkeep which remained wholly unsubmerged following the collapse of flood defences in the 1650s. The public house subsequently became a popular haunt with officials and visitors to Tempus Keep, headquarters of the Ministry of Military Affairs. The front of the inn has largely collapsed and there have been reports of additional fatalities although the MoMA press office has referred all further enquiries to the office of the Prefect.
The Prince of Modan has called the killing a "despicable" act aimed at destabilising peace on the Benacian continent, he has also expressed his condolences to Aqa Paynes' widow - Esmeralda al-Osman.
Sources close to the MoMA have been quick to place the blame upon "Ayreonist terrorists" operating out of Elwynn, although the Prince of Modan has not publically blamed Eliria for the atrocity.
Representatives of the Eliria Council have responded saying that Aqa Payne's death could have been the result of infighting between rival factions in the Imperial Government, following so closely upon the death of Mira II and the disapperance of the Imperial Mother from public life.
The Palatini Corps and the Shirekeep City Guard have detained a number of ethnic Elw as potential suspects, according to our correspondents.
Concerns are rising that, with the collapse of the White Elwynn Accords, the Imperial Government will use this atrocity as an opportunity to carry out some form of aggressive action against the Elwynnese Republic in its weakened condition.
