Liberland

**Liberland**,officially the **Free Republic of Liberland**,is a micronation claiming an uninhabited parcel of disputed land on the western bank of the Danube, between Croatiaand Serbia. It was proclaimed on 13 April 2015 by Czech right-libertarian politician and activist Vít Jedlička.The land in question has no infrastructure and lies on a floodplain.

The official website of Liberland states that the nation was created due to the ongoing Croatia–Serbia border dispute,in which some areas to the east of the Danube are claimed by both Serbia and Croatia, while some areas to the west, including the area of Liberland, are considered part of Serbia by Croatia, but Serbia does not claim them.

The size of the land in question is 7 square kilometres (2.7 sq mi; roughly the same as Gibraltar). It has been administered by Croatia since the Croatian War of Independence.There has been no diplomatic recognition of Liberland, although it has established relations with Somaliland (also unrecognized).

## History

The flag raising in Gornja Siga was performed by Vít Jedlička and some of his associates on the same day the republic was proclaimed.Jedlička is a member of the Czech Party of Free Citizens, which bases its values on the classical liberal ideology.

Jedlička stated that no nation claims the land as its own and he therefore could claim it using the terra nullius doctrine. The border, he argued, was defined in accordance with Croatian and Serbian border claims and did not interfere with any other state's sovereignty.Jedlička said in April 2015 that an official diplomatic note would be sent to both Croatia and Serbia, and later to all other states, with a formal request for international recognition.

On 20 April 2015, Jedlička delivered a lecture at the Prague School of Economics, titled "Liberland – how a state is born" (Czech: Liberland – jak vzniká stát). He discussed various aspects of the project and the interest it has attracted around the world. One topic that he brought up was the Montevideo Convention; he explained that Liberland intended to satisfy the principles of the convention, which is commonly used to define a state. At the time of the lecture, the Liberland project had assigned ten people willing to handle foreign relations.Other topics covered in the lecture included the concept of voluntary taxation and how the large number of citizenship applications had made it necessary to restructure the citizenship process to be more effective, since it was only based on an e-mail account.

On 18 December 2015, Jedlička held an event at which he presented the first provisional government of Liberland and its ministers of finance, foreign affairs, interior and justice as well as two vice presidents.

Croatian authorities have frequently blocked access to the area since the beginning of May 2015.

In May 2015, Vít Jedlička and his translator Sven Sambunjak were briefly detained by Croatian police after making an attempt to cross the border. Jedlička spent one night in detention and then was convicted and ordered to pay a fine for illegal crossing of the Croatian border but appealed the verdict. He claimed that there were at least three Liberland citizens inside the area, who came from Switzerland.Later that month, Vít Jedlička was detained again.Initially, reporters were able to enter the area with Jedlička but subsequently they were also denied entry, including journalists from the Serbian public broadcast service Radio Television of Vojvodina and from the Bosnian newspaper Dnevni avaz.

The detained were from various countries, including Ireland, Germany, Denmark, and the United States.Croatian police have continued detaining people, including those that entered the area by boat (via an international waterway).One of them, Danish activist Ulrik Grøssel Haagensen, was placed in house arrest for 5 days before being sentenced to 15 days of prison, triggering some protests in Denmark.

In May 2016, several appeals court decisions from Croatia were published. The court upheld that crossing into Liberland from Croatia is illegal, but found the convictions for entering Liberland from Serbia improper. The court said that the lower court committed "a fundamental breach of misdemeanor proceedings" and "essential procedural violations". It further ruled that "the facts were incorrectly and incompletely established [by the prosecutor] which could lead to misapplication of substantive law". A retrial was ordered in 6 of the 7 appeals. The lower court is required to determine the location of the border and the border crossing.