I don't see how Bajoran citizens could have been considered Federation Citizens, in light of Bajor's indeterminate status.
A couple of refugees say "we no longer have a nation", and the UFP gives them passports in a moment of political propaganda victory. Where's the problem? It's not as if their Cardassians masters would actually want them back.
And I highly doubt Klingons were either. I'd probably call them Residents but not Citizens (a rough equivalent of green card holders in the USA). Or migrant workers, or simply, covert mercenaries.
I really can't see where you're coming from here. Why would the biology of Worf be a showstopper in him getting UFP citizenship? Why couldn't, say, Tosk join up any time he wished?
We don't know if being UFP citizen is a burden or a boon. In old Rome, it was actually pretty advantageous for the government to dish out citizenships as free gifts. What specific disadvantages would there be for the UFP?
Indeed, I always wondered how the Maquis leadership (to the extent that an organization like this even has leadership) actually reacted to those colonists who refused to fight. Were they subject to harassment or abuse? Were they derided or even imprisoned as being "counter-revolutionary" or whatever the hell they call it? Were ALL colonists in the DMZ regarded as members of the cadre for life, and woe betide anyone who refused to follow the will of the junta?
For Eddington, citizens clearly were pawns. When Sisko threatened them with immediate orbital bombardment, Eddington's response was "Ha, I dare you - I won't even
tell them you said so!"...
But that was strategic abuse. We saw no signs of tactical-level rifle-butt action, coercion, threatening of next-of-kin or the like. And why should the Maquis have bothered? They had enough trouble arming their fighters as is - and the noncombatant colonists would be useful weapons unto themselves even (and especially) unarmed, serving as both civilian shields and a logistical burden in "For the Uniform".
In any case, it would have definitely helped if most of the Maquis "in action" that we saw, hadn't been the ones led by such an insufferable jackass like Eddington. If every Maquis ep on DS9 had featured Chakotay's people, the Maquis would have probably come off as much more sympathetic.
I guess the "surgical strike" folks like Chakotay's posse simply made much less of a media impact, despite doing their bid for the cause...
Actually, a group of Maquis coming forward and claiming (perhaps dishonestly) to disagree with Eddington's choices and want something done about the situation could have made for a compelling two-parter, at least.
Much agreed. But we might consider that the Maquis really weren't Sisko's problem: he lived quite some distance away from the DMZ, had bigger fish to fry, and might even have been actively avoided by the Maquis, who had little or no inherent interest in Bajor or the wormhole.
The "peaceful" Maquis, not wanting to antagonize the UFP but not being particularly re-illusioned by them, either, would simply want to keep their distance from anything relating to Starfleet; the actual UFP-minded collaborators among them would find so little local support that they would simply drop their Maquis badges in disgust and sail back to UFP proper without bothering Sisko with it.
Sisko did take active involvement in matters that weren't part of his job (say, Gamma quadrant exploration), so a storyline where he was told to exploit "dissident Maquis" in anti-Maquis ops could have been nice, getting him involved in interesting moral and military conflicts. Perhaps a romantic connection, too, now that they had wasted the Cal Hudson camaraderie angle.
Timo Saloniemi
), just those colonists who thought that taking up arms was not to their liking. Would have been interesting to see how they were treated.
