Trip to Liberland

Audio 48:30

Timothée Demeillers and Grégoire Osoha set out to discover Liberland, a micro-nation nestled in the Balkans.

Their story “Voyage au Liberland” is published by Éditions Marchialy.

© Chloé Vollmer-Lo/Marchialy

By: Céline Develay Mazurelle Follow

2 mins

In the heart of the Balkans, in the meanders of the Danube, this great river of Europe which crosses ten countries, is an island of sand and utopias of 7 km2 called "Liberland". 

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Liberland is a name worthy of "Gulliver's Travels", just like Liliput or Laputa, except that this land is not entirely imaginary for those who created it from scratch.

Proclaimed in 2015 by a young Czech in love with economic and individual freedom, this micro-nation located between Serbia and Croatia displays an attractive slogan: “Live and let live”. 

Behind this slogan is a political project for an off-shore nation resulting from libertarian thought, a thought that has its roots in the founding fathers of America, where freedom and property are erected as cardinal values, the State reduced to its bare minimum, abandoning in passing all public services and any logic of solidarity. 

Barely proclaimed, Liberland instantly aroused the curiosity of journalists, the enthusiasm of candidates for immigration and stateless people of all persuasions, but also the reaction of the Croatian authorities who now prevent access to this little piece of "terra nullius ".

Now virtual, this attempt at a libertarian nation, in a region sick with its nationalisms, tells a lot about our time, where citizen distrust of institutions has never been so powerful, audible.

Liberland, that's where the novelist Timothée Demeillers and the independent journalist Grégoire Osoha left, to get a closer look at the reality of this nation and the momentum it really embodies, between conspiracy, absolute desire for freedom, right-wing anarchism and cryptocurrency.

From this journey, they drew a book “

”, published by Éditions Marchialy.

In this breathless investigation, not quite a travelogue, we come across intriguing Liberians, some moved by a sincere but vague utopia, others by a very concrete political agenda.

All this under the dumbfounded more than amused gaze of the locals, Serbs or Croats who are already trying to heal the wounds of the wars they have experienced. 

With Timothée Demeillers and Grégoire Osoha.

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