PUDDINGTON CITY, Puddington – Candy Land, long the liberal bastion of the Candy Realm, has traditionally been a haven for refugees from its less democratic neighbors. Now, in the wake of a recent coup, Candy Land’s new monarch, King Kandy, has begun a brutal but delicious crackdown on dissenters, leading to thousands fleeing the kingdom.

A leader of the exile community, Tom Taffy, says dozens of professors, activists and candymen weren’t able to make it out. Many of those caught have been imprisoned, sent to reeducation camps, or executed.

“Lots of us won’t be going home for a long time,” Mr. Taffy, a former government spokesman, said at a streetside cafe in the neighboring country of Puddington, where he meets regularly with other Candy Land exiles.

He now hopes to organize some type of resistance to King Kandy from outside the kingdom, but plans on proceeding carefully to avoid, “endangering the lives of my little candies still there.”

In decades past, the notion of fleeing Candy Land for a much poorer country like Puddington would have seemed absurd to to those accustomed to Candy Land’s wealth and freedoms. Instead, relatively prosperous Candy Land has been a haven for the oppressed, whether it was families fleeing the genocidal rule of Lord Licorice four decades ago or persecuted hill tribes from the Gumdrop Mountains escaping attacks from the military of the Cake Provinces.

Nearly every evening in the Candy Kingdom, King Kandy announces on television the names of people and candymen summoned for questioning. Those that appear in response for the summons are placed in Delicious Detention, and eventually forced to sign an agreement that seals them into a “tasty treat of ten years in the Candy army.”

Even those whose names haven’t been called are living in fear. “The most sugartastic thing of all would be escaping this hellhole of a country,” said an anonymous source. “But with every port in the Ice Cream Sea blocked, and bands of Marshmallow Mercenaries roaming the Peppermint Forest, I just don’t see any way out right now.”