Democratic Kerlian State

Democratic Kerlian State (DKS) was an organisation in Kerlile in the 1990s which fought in the Kerlian Civil War. The group is classified as a terrorist organisation by the Matriarchy of Kerlile.

The aim of the group was to overthrow the Council of Kerlile and move Kerlile towards a democratic system of government. They also supported equal rights regardless of gender, and an end to torture and the isolation of Kerlile. Their leader was Henrietta Bartlett until her capture towards the end of the war.

Aims

The group originally began as a pressure group aiming to help Kerlile transition towards democracy through increasing the powers of the Parliament of Kerlile while also decreasing those of the Council. However, in 1990 the group was outlawed by the Council and took their activities underground, becoming more radical.

By the outbreak of the Kerlian Civil War in 1992, the members of DKS believed that only a complete overthrow of the Council would enable Kerlile to become a democracy. They aimed to attract international support to their cause in order to depose the Council by starting a conflict in which, in their opinion, the democracies could not fail to pay attention to.

At the beginning of the war, they hoped to inspire other Kerlians to rise up against the government by proving it could be done and to reduce the fear the Kerlian population had of the government. However, towards the middle of the conflict, they realised that was not going to happen and shifted to trying to attract international support.

Activities

Prior to the Kerlian Civil War, DKS attempted to have several members elected to the Parliament of Kerlile, however most of their candidates were vetoed by the Council. Of the few they managed to get on the ballot, only one was elected and was subsequently removed from her seat and imprisoned.

Between 1990 and 1992, DKS were involved in multiple terrorist attacks against Kerlian government targets, including setting off a bomb on a train heading to the Restricted Region and an attempted arson attack on the Council of Kerlile Archive. They were also behind an attempted assassination of Councillor Patel and a number of hoaxes.

Following the execution of a number of men, DKS decided to act and seized some territory, beginning the Kerlian Civil War. Their goal was to capture enough territory within Kerlile that the Council were forced to either surrender or flee. They accepted military assistance from Lauchenoiria in the first year of the conflict, and for a while it was uncertain who would win.

After a particularly bad defeat, the tide of the war began to turn against DKS and they were forced back into increasingly small pieces of territory. Members of the group were captured and others fled the country, fearing the poor treatment of prisoners of war by the Matriarchy.

Destruction

By the end of the war, all active members of DKS were either imprisoned, killed or had fled the country. A large-scale hunt for leftover members of DKS was undertaken, with several hundred former members rounded up and imprisoned between 1999 and 2001. No individual associated with DKS in any way was spared.

Prisoners of war who had been members of DKS were badly mistreated, with most being subjected to torture and starvation. The practice of cutting off a single finger from every captured member of DKS was introduced by Anita Patel leading to the now-common Kerlian expression of calling a traitor "nine-fingered". Prisoners were kept 6 people to a cell designed for a single occupant, with disease and deaths common.

Henrietta Bartlett was captured in 1999. It is thought she was executed that same year, but no documents are available. Of those who had left the country, a number died in mysterious circumstances in the first decade of the 21st century. Today, there are very few individuals who were affiliated with DKS alive, the most notable being Jennifer Hale, now a Councillor herself.

2003 Executions

Despite the war ending in 1999, by 2003 there were still a number of prisoners who had been members of Democratic Kerlian State in Kerlile. In October 2003, they were taken out en masse and shot on the orders of the Council. Neither location of these executions nor the eventual burial location of the bodies is known.