Alleged cult leader Jake Marshall in Silesian town, date unknown

Stockholm (KTN) — On Friday, Attorney General Cheryl Fox announced that 54 groups were added to a list of potentially dangerous cultist movements, marking the biggest addition to the list since its inception. Since March 2017, the Valkyrian government has been tracking what Chancellor Margaret Harrison had said was a "dangerous rise in cultist groups". A unit was contemporaneously formed in the Intelligence Directorate, Section 4 to track and investigate cults across the country. The Office of Cultist Movement Investigations, which released a status report on Friday, has since arrested 152 people but the OCMI's Assistant Director Eli Owens says that it is undermanned in its efforts to systematically dismantle cultist groups, "We arrest one cultist and another ten take the one's place."

Owens charges that several cultist groups have either already or are in the process of assuming control of towns across Valkyria's mainland, "When a local businessperson joins the cult, his or her assets are used to help further the cult's goals. When a local politician joins the cult, his or her influence is used to help further their goals. This is happening all over the mainland and, in most places, it is happening unimpeded." The assistant director says there are some armed resistance groups being formed and are engaged in violent conflicts with cultist groups. The murder of a member of one of these resistance groups is credited to 64 per cent of the arrests made by the OCMI. The remaining 36 per cent of arrests come from members of the resistance groups. When it comes to arresting the latter, Owens says it is "unfortunate" that the OCMI has to arrest them, but the office "cannot turn a blind eye" to crimes committed by the resistance groups, even if their crimes come out of self-defence.

The existence of the OCMI has been called an "attack on freedom" by Members of Parliament in the opposition. In April 2017, Opposition Leader Nicole Chancellor accused the OCMI of being "a front to suppress political opponents". 101 of the 204 groups that are on the OCMI's watchlist professed support for The New Right and its policies and members of these groups were urged by their leaders to vote accordingly on Referendum Day 2017 and in the subsequent June election. Jeremy Christensen, the parliamentary deputy leader of The New Right, claimed in May 2017 that the mission of the OCMI is to suppress his party's votes in rural areas in favour of the Populists of the Left, which then-parliamentary leader Taeler Shaw said was "ludicrous".

Opposition Leader Nicole Chancellor in July 2018

Shaw, who now serves as Vice Chancellor, says that "the cultist groups and their ultraconservative and reactionary views are being enforced" on her party's supporters, who mostly live in rural areas. The vice chancellor warns that the groups could "significantly drive down" voter participation by members of the Populists of the Left by threatening violence against them if they attempt to vote in the July 2019 general election. Shaw told the KTN that freedom and democracy in Valkyria are "at risk" because of the threats of violence. In June 2018, the Parliament passed a bill sponsored by the Populists of the Left that criminalised any action to intimidate voters. The party stated on their website that the bill was put forward after its membership told their Members of Parliament about the threats they were receiving from these groups.

One of the groups that the OCMI has been tracking is known simply as "The Family", which operates in the Silesian region of Valkyria. In December 2017, two members of the group were arrested and charged for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a family of four. The suspects justified the crimes by telling the authorities that the family was "showing disobedience in the face of the gods". Four months later, the two suspects were sentenced to twenty years in prison—the maximum sentence. The leader of the group, which the OCMI has identified as Jake Marshall, has been subject to a warrant to arrest since February 2018. The OCMI indicated that Marshall is "armed and dangerous" and told the KTN that local residents "fear for their lives while he walks free" in the Silesian region.

In the town of Crick, which is located in the Unicy region, a woman was arrested by local authorities and transferred into the custody of Intelligence Directorate, Section 4 after she was captured by video fatally stabbing a victim 42 times with a broken beer bottle. In her interview with the investigators, she said that the victim was stabbed once for every "sin" she committed. In the New Camden region, a group known as the Church of Valkyria is being investigated by the OCMI for allegedly drugging and kidnapping local residents for a practice that has been called "the conversion". According to anonymous sources, the Church of Valkyria takes people to an underground bunker where they inject hallucinogenic drugs into their captives and force them to either do manual labour or kidnap their friends and family.

After the release of the report by the OCMI, Chancellor Margaret Harrison made a public statement about its contents and said, "The details of this report reflect a dark and scary reality for Valkyria. Much of our country's revenue comes from tourism and the release of this report will heavily hurt this industry in the coming months and possibly years. The cultist threat in our country is very real and must be seriously dealt with." In her statement, Harrison promised to secure more government funding of the OCMI's activities. However, Opposition Leader Nicole Chancellor called on Valkyrians to ignore the OCMI report and called it "vicious lies used to target those who stand and fight for freedom".