Forest Bandits Strike Again: Cutting the Ropes Incident
Early on Thursday, November 23, at about 4:00 AM, settlers in Liberland faced a scary situation during a flood just before they were planning to go back to Liberty Island.
Woken up by strange noises, they found a man. He had taken the settlers’ own axe and was busy cutting the ropes of their houseboat, ‘Swan’ — where they were all sleeping.
To understand how dangerous this was, remember:
- The Danube River was flowing fast and was higher than normal.
- Everyone was on ‘Swan,’ a small houseboat.
If the man had cut the boat loose, it would have floated away on the strong river, out of control.
Luckily, the settlers woke up and used their phones as lights to scare the man away. He knew he was doing something very wrong:
- He was damaging their boat on purpose.
- He could have hurt or even killed people.
- He didn’t care about the danger he was causing.
Thanks to the settlers’ quick actions, they only lost the axe, which the man took with him as he fled, and some tools for maintaining the fire pit. You can see the situation from the day of the incident on two video reports from the day here.
This incident and other things that have happened make it seem like people from Hrvatske Sume, d.o.o., a forestry company, are involved. For months, our settlers have been victimised by the group’s criminal activities: They’ve had their bikes and other things stolen, and once, their wooden houses were destroyed, and building materials were taken right from the hands of settlers who shouted that they owned them.
Now, it looks like these forest bandits are becoming even more brazen, not merely content to damage property but putting people’s lives in danger by cutting ropes.
This criminal organisation has laid unfounded claims of jurisdiction over Liberland without any legal basis. It’s important to recognize that a regulation issued by a ministry cannot unilaterally bind private individuals, nor can an exchange of diplomatic notes establish such authority.
These ongoing criminal activities by the forestry service demonstrate a disregard for legal norms and procedures, and our legal teams are currently busy challenging all such claims at the court, see the Hringur Finger Case.
We plan to report this to the Croatian authorities since the Forestry Services work in Croatia and should be stopped there. We’ll keep you updated on what happens next.”
Source. Liberland.org
