President Anya Bishop on Tuesday announced that Zamastan would expand its existing sanctions against Xiomera with an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against the country.
The embargo freezes assets of the government of Xiomera and associated entities and prohibits economic transactions with it, unless specifically exempted. Exemptions include official business of the federal government and transactions related to the provision of humanitarian aid.
The executive order marks an escalation from the already expansive Zamastanian measures against the Xiomeran government since the start of the country's chaotic political and economic crisis with Zamastan earlier this past month.
In a letter to Congressional Hall outlining the action Tuesday morning, Bishop said, "I have determined that it is necessary to block the property of the Government of Xiomera in light of the continued usurpation of power by the corrupt regime of the Emperor, as well as the regime's human rights abuses, arbitrary arrest and detention of Xiomeran citizens, curtailment of free press, and ongoing attempts to undermine any news publications and broadcasts aside from that of the state."
Xiomera and Zamastan's political turmoil stems from years of economic and human rights disagreements, wherein recently the Xiomeran government attempted to secure arrest warrants for Xiomeran journalists living in Zamastan, a process widely viewed as another degree of oppression by the secretive regime. Opposition journalists were granted full protection and asylum in Zamastan
While several nations -- including Kerlile and Shuell -- have supported Xiomera in the wake of the trade war, Bishop has been a vocal enemy for the empirical regime.
"In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Xiomeran people, the Empire invoked the country's constitution to declare its trading sector illegitimate, and the office of the Xiomeran trading officials therefore vacant. The free journalism of Xiomera have courageously spoken out against the Emperor and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law," Bishop said early last week.
Zamastanian sanctions already in place on Xiomera's national oil companies have helped to accelerate a potential collapse in the country's oil output, sending ripples into the global energy market, according to Zamastanian officials.
"The Emperor is not a Xiomeran patriot," Bishop said in a speech earlier this year. "He is a puppet." To whom she was referring the Emperor as a puppet to is unclear, though some say it could be in relation to similar situation of Kerlian tariffs and sanctions.