Talk:Principality of Sealand

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

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You're right. Changed. Justfred

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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

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The most relevant single opinion is the Vitanyi opinion; a copy is at

http://www.venona.com/rdl/opinion01.html -- Vitanyi