Wikipedia
Liberland, officially the Free Republic of Liberland, is a self-proclaimed micronation claiming a parcel of disputed land on the western bank of the Danube river, between Croatia and Serbia. It was first proclaimed on 13 April 2015 by Czech right-libertarian politician and activist Vít Jedlička.
The official website of Liberland states that the nation was created due to the ongoing Croatia–Serbia border dispute. There has been no diplomatic recognition of Liberland by any country from the United Nations.
Some legal experts in both Serbia and Croatia maintain that Jedlička's claims lack legal basis, and multiple sources have reported that both Serbia and Croatia dispute ownership of the land Jedlička has targeted. Croatia and Serbia have dismissed Jedlička's claims as frivolous, although the two countries have reacted in different ways. On 24 April 2015, the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that although they consider the affair to be a trivial matter, the "new state" does not impinge upon the Serbian border, which is delineated by the Danube River. Croatia, who currently administers the land in question, has stated that after international arbitration, it should be awarded to Croatia or Serbia, not to a third party. In 2016 an article in the Chicago Journal of International Law argued that Croatia's insistence that Liberland is a part of Serbia combined with Serbia's renunciation of its title to the land has transformed the legal status of the land to terra nullius. Therefore, according to the journal, because Liberland was the first entity to claim it the territory belongs to Liberland.
Croatian authorities have frequently blocked access to the area since the beginning of May 2015. Vít Jedlička was twice detained for less than a day by Croatian authorities in the same month.
Several appeals court decisions from Croatia were published in early May 2016 stating that the lower court's convictions of illegal border crossings into Liberland were incorrect. Specifically, the court ruled that crossing into Liberland from Croatia is indeed an illegal border crossing, but the convictions for entering Liberland from Serbia were improper. The court said that the lower court "committed a fundamental breach of misdemeanor proceedings" and "committed 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 for 6 of the 7 appeals in which the lower courts will be required to "determine where the border is and where the border crossing is". The 7th appeal was for crossing into Liberland from Croatia, which the court upheld.