Croatia demolished houses of libertarian project “Liberland”, seized property

For reference:<p><pre><code> Free Republic of Liberland is a sovereign state located between Croatia and Serbia. It is a 7 km² piece of land referred to as “Gornja Siga”. The founder and elected head of state is President Vít Jedlička. Liberland is a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy. The state has two Vice Presidents and 5 Ministers. The language is English. The Liberland merit is the currency of Liberland. The country&#x27;s motto is: To live and let live. After 8 years of international diplomatic efforts, Liberland recently opened its border with Croatia on the 6 August 2023. This marks a significant step forward for Liberland, followed by an active settlement of the land. The Liberland community aims to construct enduring structures to facilitate economic growth for both the residents of Liberland and the surrounding community. </code></pre> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;liberland.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;liberland.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s another postage stamp self declared sovereign state, although being bang in the midst of already disputed territory it&#x27;s more interesting than, say, the Principality of Hutt River.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Principality_of_Hutt_River" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Principality_of_Hutt_River</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.principality-hutt-river.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.principality-hutt-river.com&#x2F;</a>

The whole Liberland micronation project was just a ridiculous publicity stunt and scam from the start.<p>1. The &quot;unclaimed territory&quot; story is a blatant lie.<p>2. The land in question (Gornja Siga) is a floodplain. It gets completely flooded with water multiple meters deep every couple of years.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Liberland" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Liberland</a><p>EDIT:<p>&gt; Define &quot;scam&quot;? Who is trying to scam who in this situation?<p>Jedlička sold quite a few Liberland &quot;citizenships&quot;.

&gt; Our legal position supporting our claim is clear: that the territory has never been part of Croatia and falls outside of its borders.<p>My legal position is that I&#x27;m king of the universe, but I&#x27;ve had some difficulty getting recognition by other states.<p>This will go down exactly how all these silly &quot;sovereign citizen&quot;, seasteader, etc. type things go down. People have somehow forgotten that all of our &quot;legal fictions&quot; we&#x27;ve created are just that: fictions. They are general rules that we&#x27;ve set up to manage society, but unless you have the ability to back up your stance with force, or to convince someone else to back you with force, &quot;legal positions&quot; are meaningless.

Idiotic decision by Croatia, here I&#x27;m talking both as a Croatian, as well as someone supporting this kind of &quot;liberal&quot; experiments. Instead of seeing this as a fun experiment that wouldn&#x27;t cost Croatian tax payer anything, the most politically controlled nepotistic organization full of &quot;uhljeb&#x27;s&quot;, Hrvatske sume, decided to act this way (under direction). If Croatian government was smart, they could have tried reaching some deal proclaiming &quot;Liberland&quot; as a free zone, under protection of Croatians army until UN recognition is made (probably never). The potential touristic revenue to local areas could have been used to justify it to Croatian people. Sad...

An interesting place to try to establish a new state might be some of the weird places that exist due to the ridiculousness of the India and Pakistan border (if they still exist--I remember that there was some talk of adjusting the borders to get rid of them).<p>There are (or were) some places where Indian territory was entirely surrounded by Pakistani territory, and some places where Pakistani territory was entirely surrounded by Indian territory.<p>But it didn&#x27;t stop there. There were a small number of cases where within one of those surrounded territories there was an even smaller territory that was part of the other country. E.g., a small Pakistani territory entirely in a larger Indian territory which was entirely inside Pakistan.<p>Pakistan and India aren&#x27;t friendly with each other.<p>So suppose you went to one of those innermost territories and convinced the people there to join you and declare themselves a new independent state. Say some Pakistani territory inside some Indian territory inside Pakistan.<p>Pakistan can&#x27;t reach you to kick you out without crossing Indian territory, which India is not likely to give them permission to do.

It sounds like a silly project, but there is no reason to not be more respectful in kicking these people off of this unclaimed land.<p>I am an old man, so apologies in advance for making an old man comment: in all of my travels, I have uniformly found people kind and decent and I have found governments to be fucked up. To be honest, there are a (very) few governments on our planet that I respect so maybe my generalization is unfair.

So disappointing that people hear are waving it off, when it sounds like The form of government they&#x27;re attempting to create is more just and democratic than any country surrounding it. Sure, it&#x27;s an experiment, and one that was probably doomed to fail without croatia&#x27;s permission. It&#x27;s still sad this happened.

As fun as this little project is, it has the potential to turn nasty if it goes on. I imagine Croatia will start taking this seriously at some point.

Context:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_...</a>

Sovereignty is impossible without defense. Defense is impossible without credible deterrence. Deterrence forces of newly established states are probably impossible without private nuclear weapons.

This is a good read: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;international-law&#x2F;States-in-international-law" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;international-law&#x2F;States-in...</a><p>The TL;DR of this is, ultimately, that a state is whatever other states say is a state, and they&#x27;re generally wary of recognizing anything disputed. There&#x27;s a fair bit of nuance there though so it&#x27;s worth a proper read. And, as we know from Ukraine, even when the state is widely recognized with well-established borders, you&#x27;d better be in a position to enforce those borders by force if your neighbour decides they disagree.

I met Vit, like I met many other people in this space. At Brock Pierce’s school in Washington DC, during Government Blockchain Association’s event. We build the apps for their events and I have been meeting all kinds of people through these kind of conferences:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;qbix-and-intercoin-around-the-world-greg-magarshaks-travelogue&#x2F;2365" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;qbix-and-intercoin-around-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;greg-magarshaks-travelogue-in-the-second-half-of-2022&#x2F;2743" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;greg-magarshaks-travelogue...</a><p>I went to Honduras to see Prospera, and other “micronations” or libertarian experiments, and want to help them out. I interviewed Patri Friedman on our show (and if anyone knows Balaji Srinivasan, who wrote The Network State, please message me — I’d love to interview him too)<p>Say what you will about running a crypto startup, but I get to do fun things:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;intercoin-mural-2-0&#x2F;392" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;intercoin-mural-2-0&#x2F;392</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;intercoin-mural-3-0&#x2F;1061" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.intercoin.app&#x2F;t&#x2F;intercoin-mural-3-0&#x2F;1061</a>

For anyone interested in self-made independent nation states, I recommend &quot;This Land is My Land&quot;[1]<p>Not exactly a comprehensive history, but it highlights and celebrates the human story of why people dare to engage in these seemingly insane projects.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1452170185" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;This-Land-My-Micronations-Self-Made&#x2F;d...</a>

Berlin 1988: There was some GDR territory near Brandenburger Tor beyond the wall.<p>Similar story but people escaped over the wall.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;alternativeberlin.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;the-amazing-story-of-the-kubat-dreieck-land-enclave-in-east-west-berlin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;alternativeberlin.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;the-amazing-story-o...</a>

Cosplayimg sovereign citizens eh?

They should have picked disputed territory where all existing states that could reasonably claim it insist that it is not theirs.<p>E.g., Bir Tawil [1], which is 2000 km^2 (800 mi^2) of disputed territory on the border between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt says it belongs to Sudan, and Sudan says it belongs to Egypt.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bir_Tawil" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bir_Tawil</a>

Still waiting for a sovereign _Libertine_ state.

Sounds like they’re at war with Croatia

Every couple years there are scams like this all over the World.<p>They usual go the &quot;spiritual&quot; route and end like pretty much every cult ends, ie. it becomes an harem, someone gets raped and&#x2F;or killed and police gets called.<p>The other way is the &quot;political&quot; route, they usually get a small group and try to create their own &quot;perfect system&quot; isolated from external influences ( of course.. ). When police comes down and tells them they can&#x27;t simply take some land and make their own &quot;laws&quot;, of course its the police being &quot;oppressive&#x2F;fascist&#x2F;[insert your one &quot;ism&quot;] and they are the victims.<p>I&#x27;ve seen this playbook and least since the 60&#x27;s but I&#x27;m sure it existed before that.

might makes right

shoot first, ask invaders later...

The number one threat to governments is a lack of need for a government. Croatia, like any government, must crush independence (lack of dependence) even if it exists outside the government&#x27;s claimed borders.<p>All past revolutions sought to replace government. The universal revolution of all humanity is to leave no reason for it to exist.

Behind any philosophical notions of statehood, a country is still just whatever territory your army can protect from other armies.

Sounds like they were inspired by Russia. Unnecessarily aggressive. There must be accountability.

Interestingly there were no major (or minor) media articles about this at all (or at least what I usually follow). Which goes to say that it was either a cover-up or parts of Croatia don&#x27;t exist outside of major cities. From my experience its more of the latter as Croatia&#x27;s public media houses are notoriously terrible and they don&#x27;t bother reporting on something unless you literally write an article for them.