Ostboland-Seratof flag debate

The Ostboland-Seratof flag debate (Seratofian: Östberga-Sératofas Vánzjinggje) (: Östberige-Seratien debatten om flaggorna) regards to the state of both the Ostban and Seratofian sharing visually similar civil flags, which has in turn led to several major incidents in the official and international level. As a result, Seratof amended its state flag for all official purposes in 2009, thus defacing the old civil and state flag with the coat of arms. The debate continues to rage on in Seratof, where more conservative legislators believed the act to cater to foreign interests, and have pushed for a reintroduction of the old state flag in all official settings. In 2007, Ostboland mandated stricter standards on the commercial display of its flag, and if necessary to use a slightly darker shade of to ensure it was not confused with Seratofian designs. There was a brief push in the early 1990s to add a to the Ostben flag, but this effort was defeated by a coalition of secular parliamentarians and the monarchy under King Gustav V.

Graphically, the Seratofian and Ostben flags have very striking differences in terms of composition, ratio, and symbolism. Telling them apart, especially when up close is fairly simple. However, when seen from afar, especially during hazy weather, the flags are said to bear resemblances to one another. This fact has led to various groups or individuals to mistake the two countries for each other. Controversially, in 1992 the published a report which concluded that, looking at the Seratofian and Ostban flags from 100 ft away, an ordinary viewer could potentially confuse the flags of both countries. AVA members from Seratof and Ostboland, insulted, resigned from the association in mass protest, causing a divisive split in the organization which was not mended until 1999.

The dispute was largely seen to have been settled in the mid 2000s by between the two countries. In 2007 the Ostben Riksdag passed the Commercial Flag Uniformity Act, requiring all depicting the Ostben flag to be of the exact same  and  as those set out in the Flag Code of Ostboland. In 2008, legislators from the ruling Social Democrats in Seratof pushed for an amendment to the state flag by defacing it with the coat of arms, with one of the reasons cited during debates being the differentiation and the regrowth of Seratofian pride in the international level. The bill was narrowly passed and came into effect on the 1st of January 2009.

History
The Ostboland flag is thought to have originated as a bicolor of orange and white in the early 14th century as the standard of the Monarchy. In the mid 15th and 16th centuries, the flag became a tricolor of orange, white, and light blue. However the current design of the Ostben flag, with a blue stripe on the top and bottom, originated during the Constitutional Revolution of 1808, with the dark shade of blue popularized by and reformers.

The Seratofian tricolor was thought to have originated during the duchy of Žablja, when Duke Arljandövgas hoisted his bicolor standard of blue and yellow forth into battle during the great northern expansion campaigns during the early 9th century CE. The flag soon quickly rose to become an official and popular symbol of the monarchy, and later the duchy as a whole. Under the Heltic Empire, displays of the bicolor flag and its derivatives were prohibited. During the peasants revolt of 1397, a precursor to the current Seratofian flag was first thought to have been flown as a symbol of revolt bearing the same bicolor tone although with alternating stripes, leading to its eventual adoption by the Kingdom of Seratof. White stripes separating the yellow band from the rest of the flag were finally added in 1929 as a symbol of peace upon the creation of the Republic of Seratof.

Historians are still debating exactly how or why so many cases of mistaken identity between the two countries started to emerge in the mid-to-late 20th century, but most agree that one primary cause is the collapse of the Samot-Seratofian Empire, which had a flag unmistakably distinct from Ostboland. Still, even after the Revolution in 1926, there seems to have been little confusion between the flags of the new Republic of Seratof and the Kingdom of Ostboland. Historians now focus on the rise of, , and. In the mid 1940s, the rate of misidentification between the two flags was under 8%, by the mid 1960s, that figure had risen to over 36%.

Design
The Seratofian civil flag consists of three horizontal blue, yellow, and blue stripes separated by two thin white fimbriations.

1966 NördskCorp "Car Swap" Scandal
In 1966 the Ostben manufacturer, NördskCorp, was rumored by to be highly over-leveraged and thus its stock price began to slide. The Board of Directors at the time, however, fervently denied anything was fundamentally wrong with the company. However, one of NördskCorp's subsidiaries in XXXX was known to have deliberately manipulated its reported earnings for the year, and committed other. A CPA working in the Accounting Division, Albert Falk, had decided to present incriminating documents to the Ostben Ambassador to XXXX.

Falk had known the Ostben Ambassador favored eating at a local cafe in the afternoon, and thus planned to intercept the Ambassador in his car. Unfortunately, the cafe was also a favorite local eating spot of the Seratofian Ambassador. Falk, waiting at the restaurant, noticed a diplomatic car, saw the flag, and assumed he was entering the vehicle of the Ostben Ambassador. Unfortunately, the moment Falk stepped in the car, he was detained by Seratofian Security for violating Seratof's and his belongings seized. The Seratofian Ambassador, upon seeing Falk take a seat across from him is supposed to have quipped:.

Falk's documents were reviewed by the Seratofian authorities, and was released after 24 hours in detention at the embassy. Unfortunately, the contents were leaked to major industrialists and financers in Seratof, who began a massive of NördskCorp shares. It is estimated that Seratofian investors made hundreds of millions by crashing NördskCorp's stock price. Meanwhile, the full details of Falk's documentation were not known to the Ostboland authorities until early 1967, by which time NördskCorp had gone bankrupt. When interviewed by the Ostben police on why he walked into the Seratofian ambassador's car, Falk is reported to have said: "The flags on the car looked the same to me"

1976 Embassy Hostage Crisis
In 1971, the Seratofian People's Party under the leadership of Marijón Matlássa gained control through a  overnight, effectively transforming the country into a  state overnight. The SPP intended to create a purer form of Seratof and assimilate all other ethnic groups inhabiting the country into Seratofian culture and through various controversial programs and covert activities. A major target of the assimilation programs were the Seraheltians who came to the region during the Heltic Empire and ruled over the Seratofians for more than four hundred years.

Upon conversion into an in 1974, these programs were undertook on a much more massive scale, primarily starting with children who were now all educated under the  rather than their own, progressing to the gradual prohibition of Seraheltic culture, language, and religion. Dissidents were sent in exile to the island of Sobruza, in which the population grew to be dominated by the Seraheltian community after a few years. In an effort to protect Heltic interests in the region, the invason of Sobruza occurred and halted any more radical activities set by the government.

The news of the Seraheltians being detained and concentrated on an island spread quickly to other states, and Seratof was condemned by many international parties, most prominently other Heltic nations or nations with substantial Heltic populations such as Modrovia, Velselexo, and Thalaky. Protests against Seratof in those countries culminated in 1976 upon the release of the controversial documents by Modrovian authorities, with many of the Seratofian ambassadors receiving death threats and terror notes from unknown sources.

However, shortly after many of the ambassadors received their threats, an Ostban embassy in XXXX was held hostage by a group of Heltic extremists. They managed to successfully breach the embassy gates, silence the guards, and enter the compounds. They held the Ostban ambassador and his employees, who were all clueless, hostage. A standoff with local police was observed, with the extremists finally surrendering to the authorities after police demanded them to state their reason for the attacks and hostage, with the leader of the group responding that "these attacks were done in solidarity with our Heltic brothers in Seratof."

Police Chief John Doe pointed out to the extremists that they have attacked the Ostban embassy, and not the Seratofian embassy. The extremists surrendered immediately to the local police force and were brought in for questioning. When asked why they mistakenly attacked the Ostban embassy, everyone saw the flag of Ostboland flying in the bright sun and thought that it was the Ostboland embassy. The act was also condemned and shunned both by Ostboland and Seratof, and the rest of the international community.

1992 AVA Report
The is an international society of vexiollogy that comprises other national and regional associations of flag scholars, designers, collectors, conservators, educators, merchants, manufacturers, historians, and hobbyists. Since the mid 20th century, the AVA has held annual meetings for which cover vexillological topics, research, and other relevant vexillogical news. The AVA publishes a report at the end of every conference which then goes into the Journal of Anterran Vexillology. In 1992, many of the AVA delegates at the conference were fascinated by the that the flags of Ostboland and Seratof were highly similar.

The President of the at the time, a Jungastian researcher by the name of Cássio Belluci Magalhães, formed a  of 25 of the world's leading researchers to study scientific reports, mathematical ratios, polling data, the history, the manufacture, public display, and the symbolism of the two flags to determine if an  really could not tell the difference between the two flags. Magalhães hoped that this committee would finally and and quash the ongoing. Unfortunately, the 25 member committee published a report which, in effect, reignited the entire controversy.

The working committee's report, titled The Stripe Misjudged: The Ostboland and Seratof Flags - A Case Study in Color Psychology and Line Representation, a 126 page document, was published at the end of the AVA conference. The report started by saying that all trained vexiollogists could tell the difference between Ostboland and Seratof's flags, which featured their own unique "ratios, hues, and proportions." The flags histories were long and established enough that citizens of both countries held their flags in high regard, and would be insulted if shown the other's flag. The report also noted that "reasonably informed" citizens of other countries could tell the difference.

However, the committee infamously decided that "from 75 to 100 ft away, especially in or  with poor, an ordinary viewer may mistake the shade of Ostben  for Seratofian  or vice versa. We cannot discount the possibility." They also noted that at the time, commercial manufacturers and businesses were using the same flag ratios when displaying the Ostben and Seratofian flags. Thus, the committee concluded that it was possible to confuse the Seratofian and Ostben flags; the committee recommended the flags be made "more distinct" from one another "for the ordinary, uninformed person."

Upon reading the report, members from Seratof and Ostboland were grossly insulted. Members from both countries resigned from the association in mass protest and published a joint statement condemning the report as an act of gross, "flag desecration", and an insult to vexillology. However a number of other members rallied to the committees side, and blamed the Seratofian and Ostben for wildly overexaggerating the reports findings. There were calls for President XXXX of the to resign, and at one point he received multiple death threats and suspicious packages from disgruntled members.

The report was publicly explosive in both countries, and caused a great, but brief, fervor. One newspaper headline read in Anglic: "For our flags, only the elites know the difference, change them to comfort the dumb plebs, experts declare". The report provoked something of a between Ostboland and Seratof as each country briefly blamed the other for the case of mistaken identity. There was a campaign in Ostboland the early 1990s to add a to the Ostben flag to recognize the country's, but this effort was defeated in the Riskdag. One prominent opponent of the change was the reigning King of Ostboland at the time Gustav V, who made an off the cuff remark related to the AVA report.

""They want us to change centuries of tradition in one stroke? Idiots. I mean really - who can't tell the difference between yellow and orange? Blind men and lunatics.""

- King Gustav V of Ostboland.

In Seratof, the idea of a flag change was very poorly received. In protest of the report made by the AVA, Seratofians throughout the country voluntarily hoisted and placed the Seratofian flag in a multitude of locations. and also took part in the act by providing citizens with flag to "flood the streets" with flags. The event was known as "Blue March" in reference to the primarily blue Seratofian flag that dominated the scenery for the rest of the month. Several politicians also publicly voiced their anger toward the report, most notably the then President of Seratof Ämran Tolje who made an extraordinary official televised appearance one day after the reports were released.

"[...] "This is a great slander to our national pride and heritage! How incompetent must an organization be to say that our flags need to change just because the other one has a 'visually similar flag when seen from afar?' No! Our flag will not change, and it is high time that we all proudly wave and fill every corner of Seratof with our standard.""

- President of Seratof Ämran Tolje.

In 1999, the published a statement apologizing for the report, and announced that the resigning members had returned to the organization.