Wikipedia: Sealand/Talk

I think it's not an oil platform but an old wwii military platform Joao

You're right. Changed. Justfred

I think this article gives too much credence to Bates' claims. Especially the statement "The United Kingdom asserts no claim over the territory, and generally treats Sealand as if it were an independent state" -- that is not true. For one thing, a man-made platform isn't territory unless it is built on rocks which are exposed to the surface at least some of the time. The tower is in British territorial waters (although in the past it was not), and therefore is subject to British jurisdiction. So the claim "The United Kingdom asserts no claim over the territory" is false. Bates claims that Britain couldn't extend its territorial waters to include Sealand, since Sealand was by then supposedly an independent state. But it almost certaintly is not an independendent state, since by any reasonable interpretation it fails to meet the Montevideo convention criteria. The United Kingdom does not "generally treats Sealand as if it were an independent state", the UK government simply ignores Bates.

Again, the claim "Great Britain has never formally recognized Sealand's independence, but as affirmed by several decisions by British courts and government agencies, Sealand enjoys a de facto sovereignty" isn't true. The United Kingdom recognized it as outside their territorial jurisdiction prior to their extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles. Since then it has been under UK jurisdiction. If there has been no official UK pronouncement to that effect (beyond the one concerning the extension of the territorial sea) with respect to Sealand, it is simply because the UK government and courts regard Bates as a kook and choose to ignore him.

And I could go on... -- SJK

Even after the extension of waters to 12 nm, there have been several interactions with UK courts; firearms incident in 1990, etc.; where they ruled they didn't have jurisdiction.

There's a lot of precedent on the extension-of-waters front which favors Sealand. When the treaty was signed, this issue came up repeatedly. Otherwise, neighboring countries could claim the territory of others.

Sealand being of artificial construction is unique also, since it was constructed illegally by a third party (UK) during WW2, for a purpose other than land extension. Sealand existed and was a country long before the relevant UN treaties on artificial structures in the sea. Several promiment law professors have basically said Sealand's status as land is the same as reclaimed land in Holland or elsewhere. I can include hypertext links to these documents.

I'll include a summary of the legal issues in another edit of the article (and re-edit the HavenCo article to be a bit more factual; I just cut and pasted quickly to get something up) -- Ryan Lackey

I would love to see copies or references to these court decisions. Frankly, people trying to start their own countries have a long history of interaction with courts, and in all the cases I've seen, they've misrepresented court decisions as being favourable to them that were anything but. (Witness e.g. the "Republic of Texas" and the ICJ, and the "Kingdom of Hawaii" and the PCA.)

How was the UK construction of it illegal?

Secondly, even if you are correct in stating Roughs Tower as being territory, that doesn't make Sealand a state. Merely claiming unoccupied territory is not sufficent to bring a new state into existence. At the very least it needs to comply with the Montevideo convention criteria, and likely needs to be recognized by other states as well.

And the extension of waters argument only works if Sealand is a state. -- SJK

Someone added to the article:

: Thus, the situation of the Vatican, where citizenship (approximately 170) and residency are primarily based on occupation, is less clear than the population of Pitcairn Island, which has a population approximately the same as Sealand (<50) but whose population is primarily hereditary and permanent.

Pitcairn Island is not a state, it is a British dependent territory. Therefore the size of Pitcairn Island is irrelevant to the issue of the Montevideo Convention criteria. -- SJK

Wiki really needs cvs; you clobbered a long submission I was making to /talk

The UN has repeatedly upheld the right of self determination of "dependent territory" non-self-governing people. If Pitcairn wanted to become independent, they would 1) have every right to by UN agreements 2) would be encouraged to do so by the UK (there was a white paper circulated by the UK to british dependent territories about ~2 years ago which asked them to do so, since the EU is now trying to force the UK to either give overseas territory British passports or make them independent (perhaps commonwealth, though). I was living on Anguilla, another british dependent territory, at the time, and it was a major issue.

Sealand's claims, regardless of validity, are much more complex than Hutt River, Republic of Texas, etc., even if only due to touching on admiralty/maritime law (which is very complex) and that the issue has now dragged out over nearly 60 years; the laws have actually changed several times in the interim.

There are perhaps 7 major points:

Artificial territory/structures as "land" -- affirmed by Montego Bay 1982, and some prior
Right of self-determination of any people (affirmed by UN, UK, EU)
extension of territorial waters not applying to territory or facilities or anything else of consequence -- this was a condition of many states being willing to agree
Actions of Sealand government 1966-present
Extraterritorial status of Sealand w.r.t. UK 1945-1966+
Opinions of various experts
Actions of other nations and organizations

I'll make 1-2 paragraph wiki articles about each topic and then deep-link onto the legal site with original documents.

Okay, for starts, where is this legal site? -- SJK

The most relevant single opinion is the Vitanyi opinion; a copy is at http://www.venona.com/rdl/opinion01.html -- Vitanyi

Whatever Vitanyi has to say, one has to ask: is his view shared by the majority in his field? In any field you will find minorities with some ideas far from the mainstream, even professors. Of course, sometimes the minorities turn out to be right. However, more often than not, the majority is right. This is especially the case with a field such a law. The law tends to closely follow the opinion of the majority of the legal professions, since it is to a significant extent constituted by their opinions. I strongly suspect the majority of experts in the field of international law would disagree with Vitanyi. -- SJK

He (was at the time) one of *the* top maritime international law authorities. I *think* he's dead now; he was presumably quite old when it was written (1970s). A few people at law schools in the US have found a lot more information in the process of writing journal articles on Sealand, which is what I'm pulling together for a legal site.

Even the UK cabinet stuff from ~1968 said the legal situation was entirely likely to go against the UK.

The most accurate/useful article for wikipedia is probably to just make it clear it is under debate, and point out the various issues, and then provide details as to what Sealand is actually like in practice (aside from the sovereignty issue, which is only one aspect)

Even people top of their fields can be wrong, and people at the top of their fields can have strange opinions that end up being rejected in their field. That Sealand is an independent state is pretty likely to be an example of this. And international law has changed in quite a few ways since the 1970s.

Secondly, I haven't actually seen the UK cabinet stuff, but you have to distinguish two issues: whether the UK had (or has) jurisdiction over Roughs Tower, and whether the Sealand is a state. They may well have felt they were on shaky legal ground on the first point, but I doubt very much they thought for a moment they'd have a problem on the second. Vitanyi's musings aside, if the issue of "is Sealand a state" came before a British court (or for that matter, just about any other court), what answer do you think they'll give? Its almost certain the answer is no. They'd think "if we let small numbers of private individuals establish new states, absolute anarchy would soon result. There would be new states popping up everywhere." Once they start thinking like that, they will adopt a suitable legal position to support it. (As to the Liberia or Orange Free State or Transvaal arguments, let me simply point out that they occured in a different historical period and involved several orders of magnitude more people than Sealand does.)

There is absolutely never going to be any chance of any court or government in the world formally recognizing Sealand as a state. I'm willing to bet any amount of money on that. -- SJK

If you bet "any amount of money" and can back it up, it's not a problem. I can do exactly what Taiwan did, and pay ~3 small countries (Grenada, etc.) and build nice roads for them, about $50m each, in exchange for recognition. This is cheating, though.

If "is Sealand a state" came up before a British court, I think they would almost certainly try as hard as they possibly could to not answer that question specifically, but to rule on other points. There are many possible avenues for this kind of legal challenge, and the EU human rights legislation only adds to it.

Sealand is more plausible/compatible as a new state than the other "micronations" due to the conditions for establishing Sealand no longer being possible -- the ammendments to the law of the sea in 1982 *specifically* prohibiting such actions in the future. After Sealand was proclaimed, the UK immediately went out and destroyed the other remaining offshore forts left over from the war (there were 6 total), to prevent similar kindso f things. Recognizing Sealand does *not* make it possible to do this again.

This is why AU/NZ send someone every year to many of their strategic uninhabited islands in the pacific, and why the prince of Tonga was so quick to invade when people occupied a reef in his territory.

Accepting Sealand as a state would set a precedent. Even if the particular means by which Sealand came into existence was closed, people would look for other loopholes. Even if no harm would came in itself from recognizing Sealand, why would any state want to (except possibly for you bribing poorer ones)? Most countries in the world would have an exceedingly low opinion of what you are trying to do.

Frankly, you are a whacko. Anyone foolish enough to think a small group of private individuals can just start their own state without an army or without any serious international support is a whacko. Your legal arguments are irrelevant: people can find psuedo-legal arguments for just about anything. Even if a very small minority of legal experts (at least some of whom are long dead) supports you, that doesn't show that you aren't a whacko: it just shows that even distinguished legal experts can be whackos at times as well. The law is ultimately a creature of politics, and no amount of abstract legal argumentation can prove something which is an absolute politicial impossibility to be legally binding. -- SJK

The legal case is only important in as much as it helps in practical realization of sovereignty. One route is having a massive military, enough to intimidate the US and UK. Another way is by winning the PR battle, either by getting a powerful ethnic/religious group on our side (e.g. Israel/US), or by solving a political problem (FRY), or by being relatively inconsequential (most caribbean nations). The legal argument is interesting in the abstract, but is only one factor in the reality of the situation.

I think that we are continuing to exist shows that we've made it more painful to attack us than to ignore/tolerate. And we persist in making money, and have sufficient technical means to accomplish our goals, using crypto and tamper-resistance. And we have other states who are entirely willing to set up additional datahaven zones for HavenCo. We have sufficient recognition to do what we want, and then trend over time is certainly in our favor.

There *are* people who have tried this kind of thing -- using jurisdiction to avoid or evade various regulations in the past. They have -- made poor countries with not a single sailor into registrars of a good percentage of the world's shipping -- made islands in the caribbean with initially nothing into the *biggest* reinsurance centers in the world -- created headquarters for some of the world's biggest companies on small islands in the middle of nowhere -- etc. And as you mentioned, the various African states of the 1800s, plus various caribbean states of ~20-30 years ago.