We’ve posted before about Bir Tawil,
a stretch of land between Egypt and Sudan that neither country wants.
Maybe Jeremiah Heaton of Abingdon, Virginia, read about it then. Last
winter, Heaton’s six-year-old daughter Emily asked him if she could be a
princess. He said yes, and has worked since then to make it so. To that
end, Heaton has claimed the 800-square-mile territory of Bir Tawil as
his own, renaming it the Kingdom of North Sudan. He planted a homemade
flag there on June 16, Emily’s seventh birthday. That makes him the
king, and Emily a princess. Heaton has two other children, who would
also be royalty.
Sheila Carapico, professor of
political science and international studies at the University of
Richmond, told the Bristol Herald Courier last week that Heaton would
need legal recognition from neighboring countries, the United Nations or
other groups to have actual political control of the land.
Heaton,
who ran for Congress out of Virginia’s 9th district in 2012 and lost,
plans to reach out to the African Union for assistance in formally
establishing the Kingdom of North Sudan and said that he is confident
they will welcome him. Representatives from the Egyptian and Sudanese
embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment
Saturday.
Bir Tawil, or The Kingdom of North Sudan,
is all desert, but Heaton plans to turn it into an agricultural area,
which should please both Egypt and Sudan.
Read about
Heaton’s journey to his new kingdom at the Washington Post.
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