Salt Coast Clearances
| Salt Coast Clearances | |
|---|---|
 The ruins of a cleared Veyari village, photographed by the Concord commission in 2046 | |
| Date | 2037 to 2039 |
| Location | The Salt Coast, Rendorlin |
| Perpetrators | Ulmarkan Empire; Marshal Hjalmar Sorn |
| Victims | Veyari |
| Deaths | About 150,000 |
The Salt Coast Clearances were the systematic killing and expulsion of the Veyari from the Salt Coast of Rendorlin by the army of the Ulmarkan Empire between 2037 and 2039, during the Protectorate Wars. About 150,000 Veyari were killed and about as many were driven into camps. The Clearances were ordered by the Decree of Open Ground, issued by Marshal Hjalmar Sorn and confirmed by Torvald Hesk, and were carried out so that the cleared land could be given to Ulmarkan settlers.[1][2] The Ulmarkan government denies that they were a crime.
The Decree of Open Ground
[edit]The Decree, issued in the autumn of 2037 after Veyari fighters held a column in the marshes for eleven days, ordered that every settlement in a named zone be "cleared" and left without shelter, food or boats. Sorn's order of the day was shorter: "Open the ground." The army worked outward from the interior in rings, and the rings were numbered, as in a tournament.[1]
Declarations of Pin
[edit]The empire gave the killings a legal form. Bout tribunals, the courts the Arena Law had created, tried Veyari tide-wardens and declared them "pinned", a status in which the accused was held to have forfeited a fair bout and the right to a defence. Some 3,400 wardens were pinned and executed between 2037 and 2039. Settlements whose wardens had been pinned were then declared "forfeit", and their land entered the settlement register.[2]
The Dunmarrow Massacre
[edit]The worst single event was the killing at Dunmarrow, a river town of about 30,000, in November 2038. The town had sheltered refugees from the rings, and was taken after a siege. In three days about 21,000 people were killed, many in the town's drained salt-pans, and the town was burned. The tide-calendar, the text of the Veyari religion, was in the town's warden-house and was destroyed with it. The army's report called the place "closed".[2]
Discovery and denial
[edit]The first mass graves were found by the Concord's commission in 2046, five years after the last surrender, and by 2049 more than forty had been mapped. The Ulmarkan government has called the graves "battlefield burials" and the commission's report "an instrument of the Pact". The Veyari Survivors' Committee has collected 150,000 names. Sorn died in 2052 and was buried with honours; the empire awarded him the Circle of Gold.[2][3]
Legacy
[edit]The Clearances are the basis of the case against the Ulmarkan Empire before the Concord, which has never reached a verdict. The Office of the Outer Circle's Second Settlement Plan of 2058 has been read by historians as a proposal to do it again.[3]