Sovereign citizen movement

Origin The sovereign citizen movement originated from a combination of tax protester ideas, 1960s–70s radical and racist anti-government movements, and pseudolaw, which has existed in the U.S. since at least the 1950s. was a far-right, anti-government movement The roots of the sovereign citizen movement were thus strongly associated with white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies. Developments In the early 1980s, tax protester Gordon Kahl, a former Posse Comitatus member, helped radicalize sovereign citizens' anti-government rhetoric. Kahl considered the government not only illegitimate but actively hostile to Americans' interests. After he was killed in 1983 during a shootout with law enforcement, the movement considered him a martyr, which helped amplify his views. some of whom were associated with far-right groups. They included Roger Elvick, a member of a successor organization of the Posse Comitatus. Elvick conceived the redemption methods, a set of fraudulent debt and tax payment schemes that became part of sovereign citizen ideology. As the Posse Comitatus movement evolved, its members created pseudolegal bodies that claimed to speak with the authority of "natural law" or "common law" and to supersede the government's legal system. The most common tactic of these "common law courts" was to issue false liens against their enemies' property. and committed bank fraud with counterfeit checks and money orders. The group surrendered in June 1996 after 81 days of armed standoff with the FBI. Several members of the Montana Freemen received long prison sentences. The group's leader, LeRoy M. Schweitzer, died in prison in 2011. Over time, the movement expanded beyond its original white nationalist environment to people of all backgrounds. and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In Canada, sovereign citizen beliefs mixed with local tax protester concepts during the 2000s and gave birth to an offshoot, the freeman on the land movement, which eventually spread to other Commonwealth countries. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers", with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges". According to another SPLC estimate, the number of sovereign citizen-influenced militia groups in the U.S. increased dramatically between 2008 and 2011, from 149 to 1,274, respectively. , a violent crime linked to the sovereign citizen movement There is significant overlap between the sovereign citizen and QAnon movements. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that the sovereign citizen movement was attracting a growing number of QAnon adherents, whose belief in the illegitimacy of the Biden administration is compatible with the sovereign citizens' broader anti-government views. Videos of people attempting to use sovereign citizen-style arguments during traffic stops, in courtrooms, and in other public places are common on the Internet, where they are often considered a source of amusement. Researcher Christine Sarteschi has said that this may cause people to underestimate the movement's potential for violence and its links with criminal conduct. Several people charged with crimes such as murder or sexual assault have used sovereign citizen arguments as attempts to negate the court's jurisdiction over them. In 2025, Sarteschi argued that we must better understand why people become sovereign citizens, and noted that while the movement itself is nonviolent, deep mistrust of authority can lead sovereign citizens to commit acts of violence anyway. An increase in sovereign citizens was observed in Australia and the United Kingdom during the pandemic. Several COVID-19-related incidents involving local sovereign citizens who refused to follow sanitary measures were also reported in Singapore. In June 2022, Sarteschi reported that the movement was rapidly expanding and could now be found in 26 countries. Hundreds, if not thousands, of sovereign citizens have been imprisoned as a result of their actions. Many have continued their activities behind bars, often spreading their ideologies among other inmates. Australia In Australia, after the 2022 Wieambilla police shootings, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police indicated they would examine the groups more closely as their beliefs increasingly align with those of other extremists, with the AFP Joint Counter Terrorism Team now required to undergo training on sovereign citizen threats. == Denominations and symbols ==

s and thumbprints on documents, and the addition of punctuation (dashes, hyphens, colons, or commas) to one's name, which sovereign citizens believe has a legal effect. Groups such as Moorish sovereigns and the Washitaw Nation have their own specific flags and symbols. Some sovereign citizens use references to nonexistent "Republics" or to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), variations on the flag of the United States, or religious symbols such as that of the Vatican, which are thought to establish "sovereignty". One common symbol of the American sovereign citizen movement is a version of the U.S. flag with alternate colors and vertical stripes. Sometimes known as "the flag of peace" or "Title Four flag", it is based on a flag allegedly used by American custom houses for a brief period during the 19th century. Around the 2000s, some sovereign citizens began to claim that this is the true flag of the United States. == Theories ==

The movement has no defining text, established doctrine, or centralized leadership, but there are common themes, generally implying that the legitimate government and legal system have been somehow replaced and that the current authorities are illegitimate. Taxes and licenses are likewise thought to be illegitimate. A number of leaders, commonly called "gurus", develop their own variations. Sovereign citizens' legal theories reinterpret the Constitution of the United States through the selective reading of law dictionaries (notably an obsolete version of Black's Law Dictionary), state court opinions, or specific capitalization, Most consider county sheriffs the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country, with authority superior to that of any federal agent, elected official, or other local law enforcement official. Illegitimacy of laws and government A widespread belief among sovereign citizens is that the state is not an actual government, but a corporation. American movement members believe that the corporation purporting to be the U.S. federal government is illegally controlling the republic via a territorial government in Washington, D.C. Sovereign citizens believe that sometime after the Founding Fathers set up the government, commercial law secretly replaced common law. This commercial law is generally understood to be admiralty law, as sovereign citizens believe the current, illegitimate law is based on principles of international commerce. Pseudolegal schemes attribute a particular power to the Universal Postal Union Another common belief among sovereign citizens is that they can opt out of the purported contract, making themselves immune from the laws they do not wish to follow, by declining to "consent": when confronted by police officers or other officials, sovereign citizens typically attempt to negate their authority by saying, "I do not consent". In the 1970s, one of the movement's originators, white supremacist ideologue William Potter Gale, identified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as the act that converted "sovereign citizens" into "federal citizens" by their agreement to a contract to accept benefits from the federal government. Other commentators have identified other acts, including the Emergency Banking Act, and the alleged suppression of the Titles of Nobility Amendment. Likewise, sovereign citizen leader Richard McDonald claimed that there are two classes of citizens in the U.S.: the "original citizens of the states" (also called "states citizens" or "organic citizens") and "U.S. citizens". According to McDonald, U.S. citizens, whom he calls "Fourteenth Amendment citizens", have civil rights, legislated to give the rights to freed black slaves after the Civil War: this benefit is received by consent in exchange for freedom. On the other hand, white state citizens have unalienable constitutional rights. On this view, state citizens must take steps to revoke and rescind their U.S. citizenship and reassert their de jure common-law state citizen status. This involves removing oneself from federal jurisdiction and relinquishing any evidence of consent to U.S. citizenship, such as a Social Security number, driver's license, car registration, ZIP Code, marriage license, voter registration, or birth certificate. Also included is the refusal to pay state and federal income taxes because citizens not under U.S. jurisdiction are not required to pay them. The concept of "14th Amendment citizens" is consistent with the movement's white supremacist origins in that it can cause adherents to believe that African Americans, having become citizens only after the Civil War, have far fewer rights than Whites, The underpinnings of sovereign citizens' theories of exemption vary. One belief is that the "Moors" were America's original inhabitants and are therefore entitled to be self-governing. They claim to be descendants of the Moroccan "Moors" and thus subject to the 1786 Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, which they believe exempts them from U.S. law. A variation of "Moorish" ideology is found in the Washitaw Nation, which claims rights through provisions in the Louisiana Purchase treaty granting privileges to Moors as early colonists and the nonexistent "United Nations Indigenous People's Seat 215". The sovereign citizen movement overlaps with the redemption movement (also known as "A4V" after one of its schemes), which claims that a secret bank account is created for every citizen at birth as part of the process whereby the U.S. government uses its citizens as collateral. Some sovereign citizens also subscribe to the NESARA conspiracy theory, according to which the U.S. Congress secretly created a new economic order and canceled all debt. Certain subgroups of the movement adhere to theories about extraterrestrials and reptilians. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that sovereign citizen ideology was "increasingly seeping" into QAnon, as the movement's anti-government views were compatible with QAnon's belief in a worldwide "cabal" and in the illegitimacy of the Biden administration. Another American guru, Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf, claimed before her sentencing for fraud to have "foreclosed" and "canceled" all banks and governments through UCC filings. Likewise, Romana Didulo, a Canadian QAnon conspiracy theorist, uses sovereign citizen concepts to back her claims of being the rightful Queen of Canada, and eventually the "Queen of the World". == Tactics ==

" with pseudolegal language used by a sovereign citizen in Belfast, Northern Ireland|thumb Sovereign citizens may be categorized by their use and acceptance of pseudolaw. Some are simply naïve, some strategically adopt pseudolaw, some embrace and genuinely believe in the ideology, and some are "gurus" who may profit from spreading pseudolaw. Sovereign citizens may be affiliated with a group within the movement, follow the teachings of a specific "guru", or act entirely on their own. By disobeying rules they consider illegitimate, they regularly find themselves in conflict with all forms of government institutions, most commonly law enforcement, the judiciary, and the revenue services. and then having multiple conflicts with law enforcement over this matter, as well as his lack of a driver's license. Sovereign citizens often use flawed or invented legal arguments or irregular documents that may have been bought from other movement members as "proof" of their claims. This includes avoiding the use of expressions they think would create "joinder", As they regard themselves as bound only by their own interpretation of common law, sovereign citizens have been setting up militias of self-appointed "sheriffs", Sovereign citizen documents may include unusual formalities, such as maxims written in Latin, thumbprints, or stamps in certain places, as well as unconventional, sometimes incomprehensible pseudo-legalese. Stamps are generally accompanied by signatures (with the sovereign citizen's name signed across them), initials or other markings. "Truth Language" or "Quantum Grammar", Sovereign citizens may challenge the laws, rules, or sentences they disagree with by engaging in the practice known as paper terrorism, Blandino was charged with extortion and impersonation of an officer. He then filed numerous motions to delay the proceedings and tried to disqualify almost every judge in the district. Blandino's motions required multiple reviews and countless hours of hearings. Traffic law violations . Note that it does not say "American State National" but its use is illegal regardless. Sovereign citizens consistently violate traffic laws by refusing to register or insure their vehicles, or use driver's licenses or valid license plates. It is estimated that sovereign citizens and other tax protesters caused the U.S. about $1 billion in public losses from 1990 to 2013. Sovereign citizens use a variety of fraudulent schemes, including filing false securities, to avoid paying taxes, get "refunds" from the government, or eliminate their debts and mortgages. Other scams primarily target victims who are not part of the movement. Sovereign citizens may use the ineffective methods the redemption movement advocates for appropriating the sums from one's purported secret Treasury account: such schemes are sometimes called "money for nothing". (this scheme is commonly known as "A4V"). In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that although this particular tactic seems to have appeared around 2014, its use had intensified since 2019. According to the ADL's report, these sham rulings are designed, besides targeting specific victims, to clog the court system that sovereign citizens consider illegitimate. In the United States, authorities have identified some people involved in First Amendment audits as sovereign citizens. == Legal status of theories ==

Sovereign citizens' tactics often succeed in delaying legal proceedings and occasionally confuse or exhaust public officials, Australia, and New Zealand. Mark Pitcavage, a scholar working for the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, has summed up sovereign citizen ideology as "magical thinking". One state representative from New Hampshire, Richard Marple, repeatedly tried to introduce legislation that would recognize sovereign citizen ideas, without success. The belief that legal obligations are contracts that can be opted out of ignores that government and court authority is not a product of one's consent and that the relationship between the state and an individual is not based on a contract. The Canadian decision Meads v. Meads refuted the theory that laws are contracts, commenting: Author Richard Abanes has written that sovereign citizens fail to sufficiently examine the context of the case law they cite, and ignore adverse evidence, such as Federalist No. 15, wherein Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Constitution places everyone personally under federal authority. When he faced tax evasion charges in 2006, actor Wesley Snipes adopted a sovereign-citizen defense, claiming to be a "non-resident alien" who should not be subject to income tax. He was eventually found guilty of three misdemeanor counts of failing to file federal income tax returns and sentenced to 36 months in prison. Jurisdiction Arguments that one can be personally exempt from the jurisdiction of the courts are legally baseless. According to United States v. Benabe (2011), "Regardless of an individual's claimed status of descent, be it as a 'sovereign citizen', a 'secured-party creditor', or a 'flesh-and-blood human being', that person is not beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. These theories should be rejected summarily, however they are presented." The sovereign citizen concept that U.S. courts are secretly admiralty courts and thus have no jurisdiction over people has been repeatedly dismissed as frivolous. In 1990, after Andrew Schneider was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for making a threat by mail, he argued that he was a free, sovereign citizen and therefore not subject to the jurisdiction of federal courts. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected his argument as having "no conceivable validity in American law". In 2017, former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle similarly tried to overturn his convictions on child sex tourism and child pornography charges by denying the court's jurisdiction over him. The court dismissed Fogle's motions, reminding him that "the Seventh Circuit has rejected theories of individual sovereignty, immunity from prosecution, and their ilk". In a 2013 criminal case, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington responded to pseudolegal filings by sovereign citizen Kenneth Wayne Leaming with the following comments: In 2018, upon dismissing the arguments of sovereign citizen guru Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf and her associate Randall Beane, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee found the idea that one cannot be charged by the judiciary without one's consent "incredible and absurd": In 2021, Pauline Bauer, a Pennsylvania restaurant owner who was facing charges for participating in the Capitol riot, used a sovereign citizen line of defense by claiming to be a "self-governed individual" and later remanded to jail pending trial for refusing to cooperate with the court or comply with the conditions of her release. In January 2023, Bauer was found guilty on all counts of misdemeanor and of the felony of obstructing an official proceeding. In May, she was sentenced to 27 months in prison. Bauer's co-defendant, who had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, was sentenced to probation and to a $500 fine. Judge Jennifer Dorow ruled that Brooks was not allowed to argue he was a sovereign citizen in court, saying the defense was without merit; she said that sovereign citizen legal theories are "nonsense" and that the movement's tactics had no place in the judicial system. Brooks was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. "Gurus" Bonnie and David Straight sold their adherents processes and documents (such as "noncitizen national passports" and illegal license plates) that purportedly gave them "American State National" status and made them immune to U.S. jurisdiction. The Straights' methods were proved ineffective in April 2023 when they were arrested and detained on several charges, Strawman theory and redemption schemes The core redemption/A4V theory that people possess vast sums of money hidden from them by the government in a secret account, and that this money can be unlocked through specific means, has no basis in reality. Likewise, the strawman theory has been repeatedly dismissed by courts. Both theories are listed by the FBI as common fraud schemes. In 2021, the District Court of Queensland dismissed an application that relied on the strawman theory, commenting that this argument "may properly be described as nonsense or gobbledygook". Redemption methods such as "Accepted for Value" are based on a misinterpretation of the Uniform Commercial Code and have no effect. Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf, a licensed lawyer who had been at one point a state prosecutor, eventually joined the sovereign citizen movement: she built an online following as a "guru" and advocated the use of redemption methods to reclaim one's alleged secret fund from the banking system and the Federal Reserve. One of her followers, Randall Beane, used Internet fraud to embezzle two million dollars, which he believed were part of his secret account; Tucci-Jarraf was aware of Beane's scheme and advised him throughout. Beane and Tucci-Jarraf were arrested and charged with federal crimes. Both were found guilty of conspiracy to launder money in 2018, with Beane also being convicted of wire and bank fraud. The court ruled that Tucci-Jarraf, having used her legal training to assist Beane, was an aggravating circumstance. Beane was sentenced to 155 months in prison, and Tucci-Jarraf to 57 months. Shrout was charged in 2016 with 13 counts of using fictitious financial instruments. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that driver's licenses and traffic regulations are necessary for public safety. Sovereign citizen entities Sovereign citizens' "common law courts" and other "legal" entities lack any legitimacy. Some may be simply ignored by authorities: in 2015, sovereign citizen "guru" Anna Maria Riezinger aka Anna von Reitz, the self-proclaimed "judge" of a common law court in Alaska, Depending on the nature and severity of their actions, sovereign citizen "courts" may be disbanded and their leaders prosecuted. In 2016, after David Wynn Miller's "Federal Postal court" issued a $11.5 million judgment against a mortgage service company, a federal judge investigated that entity and ruled that it was "a sham and no more than a product of fertile imagination". Two years later, Leighton Ward, who worked as "clerk" of this false court was sentenced in Arizona to years in prison for fraudulent schemes and artifices. In the 2010s, Bruce Doucette, a computer repair shop owner who styled himself a "Superior Court Judge" and led a group called "The People's Grand Jury in Colorado", traveled the country to help other sovereign citizens fight local governments and set up their own "common law courts". He and his followers attempted to intimidate public officials so they would dismiss criminal cases against other sovereign citizens. When these efforts failed, Doucette's group retaliated by engaging in paper terrorism against them and threatening them with "arrest". In August 2021, Sitcomm Arbitration Association, the largest sovereign citizen "arbitration" entity, was held liable for a $1,384,371.24 fine in a default judgment for violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Other arguments and schemes The claim that the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 turned the United States into a business corporation is based on a misunderstanding of the term municipal corporation used in the Act (which referred to the District of Columbia and not to the entire country) and on a misinterpretation of a provision in Title 28 of the United States Code, which includes a definition of the United States as a "federal corporation" (meaning a group authorized to legally act as a single entity and not a business corporation). American courts have routinely dismissed documents written in David Wynn Miller's "Parse-Syntax-Grammar"/"Quantum Grammar" language, calling them unintelligible. Canadian judge John D. Rooke commented, in his Meads v. Meads decision, that Miller's "bizarre form of 'legal grammar is "not merely incomprehensible in Canada, but equally so in any other jurisdiction". == Outside the United States ==

There is some crossover between the two groups, calling themselves freemen on the land and sovereign citizens, as well as various others sharing similar beliefs, which may be loosely defined as "see[ing] the state as a corporation with no authority over free citizens". In Canada, which has its own tradition of tax protesters, fiscal misconceptions of American origin were gradually introduced during the 1980s and 1990s. As of the 2010s, there are people identifying as sovereign citizens in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa. Sovereign citizens from the U.S. have gone on speaking tours to New Zealand and Australia, appealing to struggling farmers, and there are Internet presences in both countries. Canada had an estimated 30,000 sovereign citizens in 2015, many of whom also associated with the freeman on the land movement. There can be confusion between the two populations. The 2012 ruling Meads v. Meads examined almost 150 cases involving pseudolaw and sovereign citizen or freeman of the land tactics, grouping them and characterizing them as "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments". Australia Australia, which has its own tradition of pseudolaw, imported sovereign citizen ideas in the 1990s, even before the movement's 2000s resurgence. It later imported the more Commonwealth-specific freeman on the land movement. local sovereign citizens groups, and some others. In 2011, climate denier and political activist Malcolm Roberts (later elected senator for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party), wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Julia Gillard filled with characteristic sovereign citizen ideas and vocabulary, although he denied that he was a "sovereign citizen". From the 2010s, there has been a growing number of freemen targeting Indigenous Australians, with groups using names like Tribal Sovereign Parliament of Gondwana Land, the Original Sovereign Tribal Federation (OSTF), and the Original Sovereign Confederation. OSTF Founder Mark McMurtrie, an Aboriginal man, has produced YouTube videos speaking about "common law", which incorporates freemen beliefs. Appealing to other Aboriginal people by partly identifying with the land rights movement, McMurtrie played on their feelings of alienation and lack of trust in the systems which had not served Indigenous people well. In 2015, the New South Wales Police Force identified "sovereign citizens" as a potential terrorist threat, estimating that there were about 300 sovereign citizens in the state at the time. Freemen/sovereign citizen ideas have been promoted on the Internet by various Australian groups such as "United Rights Australia" (U R Australia). The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the spread of the movement in Australia; numerous incidents with law enforcement have since been reported, some of them violent such as the Wieambilla (2022) and Porepunkah (2025) shootings. New Zealand New Zealand, which has imported foreign pseudolaw including Canadian freeman on the land ideology, has developed its own sovereign citizen movement. In 2024, police identified 1,400 New Zealanders as acting under the influence of sovereign citizen ideology. United Kingdom Sovereign citizen ideology reached the United Kingdom around 2010. Austria and Germany The () movement in Germany originated around 1985 and had approximately 19,000 members in 2019, more concentrated in the south and east. The originator claimed to have been appointed head of the post-World War I , but other leaders claim imperial authority. The movement consists of different, usually small groups. Some groups have issued passports and identification cards. The movement claims that modern-day Germany is not a sovereign state but a corporation that the Allied nations created after World War II. It has also expressed hope that Donald Trump will lead an army to restore the empire. According to the German domestic intelligence service, only a small number of groups in the Reich citizen movement are on the far right. Rather, the common denominator is the rejection of the Federal Republic as a legal entity. The Reichsbürger movement has used language and techniques from the One People's Public Trust, an American sovereign citizen group operated by "guru" Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf. On May 13, 2025, the German government banned the main Reichsbürger organization, "Königreich Deutschland". The group, established in November 2015, also used language from the One People's Public Trust. In 2019, its leader was sentenced to 14 years in jail after trying to order the army to overthrow the government and requesting foreign assistance from Vladimir Putin. Other members received lesser sentences. Italy As of the 2010s, incidents involving sovereign citizens have been reported in Italy, with various people purporting to opt out of Italian citizenship through nonlegal procedures and make themselves immune from Italian law. Members of one group attempt to do so by declaring themselves citizens of the "Sovereign Kingdom of Gaia" () while others refer to themselves as the "People of Mother Earth" (). Another group called "We is, I am" (; also translated as "One People I Am") emerged in Italy in the early 2020s, inciting its followers to stop paying utility bills, taxes, and fines, and to reject passports and driver's licenses. This movement is connected with American "guru" Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf and, according to Italian media, had about 10,000 followers in 2023. Russia A Russian movement of conspiracy theorists, known among other names as the Union of Slavic Forces of Russia (, ), or more informally as "Soviet Citizens", holds that the Soviet Union still exists de jure and that the current Russian government and legislation are thus illegitimate. One of its beliefs is that the government of the Russian Federation is an offshore company through which the United States illegally controls the country. France and Belgium In France, pseudolegal arguments claiming that enacted laws were invalid became gradually popular during the 2010s among conspiracy theorists. They gained more traction during the yellow vests protests, with claims that the Constitution of France was null and void. A New Age-oriented French group of conspiracy theorists called "One Nation" became known to the public in 2021 for their involvement in the kidnapping of a child. Later that year, they attempted to purchase a property in Lot, purportedly to create a "center for the arts" and a "research laboratory". The One Nation movement holds beliefs similar to those of American sovereign citizens and denies the legitimacy of the French State. They also share beliefs with QAnon. The group translates the name "sovereign citizens" in French as (sovereign beings) or (awakened beings). In 2021, people affiliated with One Nation were reported to be active in Belgium. In February 2022, the group's French spokeswoman was sentenced to six months in prison for multiple traffic violations. She was arrested and incarcerated in September of the same year. In 2024, sovereign citizen ideology became more familiar to the French general public due to the viral video of an incident between a couple of conspiracy theorists and traffic police. Netherlands In 2023, the sovereign citizen movement was reported to be gaining traction in the Netherlands. People connected with a group called "Common Law Netherlands Earth" (Common Law Nederland Earth) organised themselves as "sheriffs" and rejected the rule of law in the Netherlands. In July 2024, a movement member was tried for attempting to acquire firearms illegally. Other Dutch sovereign citizens were reported to have made similar attempts, which caused concern in the Netherlands, where anti-government radical movements are traditionally considered nonviolent. In 2024, Dutch intelligence and security services estimated the number of Dutch sovereign citizens as several tens of thousands. Czech Republic The movement was first covered by Czech media in 2022, when the government noticed an increasing number of people submitting a "sworn declaration of life" and demanding to terminate a contract with the "Czech Republic corporation". It gained further traction in the middle of 2023, when sovereign citizen movement followers tried to interrupt multiple court proceedings involving disseminators of COVID-19 and Russo-Ukrainian War disinformation, demanding that the judges "identify" themselves. The movement was also connected to a case of a family with two unregistered children living in a yurt near Náchod. Czech members of the movement maintain that they remain de jure citizens of Czechoslovakia, based on a belief that the dissolution of Czechoslovakia was illegal. Lithuania The sovereign citizen movement emerged in Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic among people wishing to resist restrictions. The first Lithuanian sovereign citizen organization was an offshoot of the local Krishna Consciousness movement. Some sovereign citizens have united in a Naujieji Lažai community that expresses nostalgia for the Soviet era and associates with pro-Russia and pro-Belarus initiatives. Lithuanian sovereign citizens attracted more attention in 2023 when two parents belonging to the movement, whose family had no identity documents, kidnapped their children from foster care and attempted to escape with them to Belarus. Norway There is a small sovereign citizen movement in Norway. One prominent member is Ingunn Sigurdsdatter (formerly Røiseland), who gained notoriety for renouncing her citizenship and declaring a sovereign state around her own house called "Niceland". She was evicted in 2014 when her house was foreclosed because she refused to pay interest or make down payments on her mortgage. She also opposed the swine flu vaccine and was one of several people who sued the Norwegian Institute of Public Health for lying and fearmongering about the swine flu pandemic. She has been an associate of controversial princess Märtha Louise. Singapore Sovereign citizen ideology has surfaced in Singapore, but it is not as widespread there as in some other countries. Two prominent cases have highlighted this phenomenon: • During the COVID-19 pandemic, Paramjeet Kaur, called the "Shunfu mart woman" by local media, gained notoriety for refusing to wear a mask and arguing with safe-distancing ambassadors. She cited sovereign citizen-like beliefs, claiming that the regulations did not apply to her. She was jailed for two weeks and fined S$2,000. • In 2023, Tarchandi Tan was convicted on multiple charges, including contempt of court and causing intentional harassment. She had repeatedly refused to comply with court orders, insisting that she was not bound by Singaporean law and invoking sovereign citizen rhetoric. ==See also==