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Transnational Repression Threatens Freedom Worldwide

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Date: 2022-06

In non-democratic countries all over the world, political leaders rule without the consent of their citizens. They preside over brittle regimes that harass, assault, surveil, and threaten those whom they perceive as threatening their grip on power. This is the logic that drives transnational repression – a term that describes when governments reach across borders to silence dissent among exiles and diasporas. Transnational repression is a tool of global authoritarianism and a threat to freedom worldwide.

Today Freedom House published Defending Democracy in Exile, our second global report on transnational repression. Our first report, Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach, described the scale and scope of this threat to human rights and democracy by identifying the perpetrator states, their tactics, and their targets. Our second report examines how governments, international organizations, and technology companies can better protect exiles and diasporas. It moves the conversation forward to ask: what can be done to protect those who have left the territory of authoritarian states but remain within their reach?

Throughout almost four years of research on this issue, we have been fortunate to hear the stories of those who have experienced being targeted by governments firsthand. We are indebted to exiles and diaspora members from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Rwanda, Russia, China, Turkey, Vietnam, Equatorial Guinea, and Ethiopia for sharing their stories with us.

While many victims of transnational repression are human rights defenders, activists, dissidents, and journalists, others are subjected to extraterritorial violence for doing things that most of us living in democracies see as mundane and natural: practicing our religion of choice, attending a protest, joining a political party, expressing our frustration with the government in private, online, or in print. These acts, however small and ordinary, challenge authoritarian rule and put people at risk of repression.

One of the aims of the second phase of research into transnational repression has been to bring to light just how vulnerable people living in democratic countries continue to be to authoritarian threats and violence. In 2021 alone, authoritarian governments and their agents harmed or planned to harm people living in the United States, Sweden, France, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Kenya, Costa Rica, and Kazakhstan. Transnational repression is not something that happens far away; it is something that happens close to us – to our neighbors, our college classmates, reporters we read, community organizers, and people running for political office.

In Defending Democracy in Exile, we examine the policies of nine countries and urge that the governments of countries where exiles and diasporas live need to improve their security, migration, and foreign policies in order to protect those targeted through transnational repression. More can and should be done to counter this tool of authoritarianism.

The fact that transnational repression violates state sovereignty and threatens people who have made our countries their new homes is reason to act now. But we should also understand that, in defending those targeted by transnational repression, we are not just protecting an abstract idea of democracy or helping to shield the vulnerable among us from authoritarian violence, we are also protecting our own freedoms.

Global authoritarianism manifests in different and ever-expanding ways, all of which degrade human rights. Autocrats use spyware and other digital tools to track dissidents and drown out critical voices online with threats and by maliciously flagging social media posts for removal. They abuse international organizations for their own purposes, manipulating tools that exist to help fight international crime and terrorism to detain and return activists and journalists. They band together at international forums to shut out human rights defenders and representatives of religious and ethnic minorities. In extreme, but sadly no longer unthinkable cases, authoritarians launch wars against countries that refuse to accommodate their vision of the world order. These methods undermine the fundamental notion that political power should be constrained by respect for individual freedom. The consequences are dangerous for everyone.

Transnational repression is another manifestation of global authoritarianism. Using assassinations, renditions, assaults, unlawful deportations, mobility controls, coercion by proxy, spyware, and other tactics, non-democratic governments export authoritarian norms beyond their borders. In striving to exercise of their own human rights, exiles and dissidents push back against this expansion of authoritarianism and act to defend freedom for all of us. We can help them.

Democracies can raise awareness of the physical threat posed to foreign activists among law enforcement and security agencies in our countries, secure our immigration systems against misuse by autocrats and recommit to the right to seek asylum, apply targeted and multilateral sanctions combined with visa bans against perpetrator countries and limit arms sales to them, regulate the export of dangerous surveillance technology, and form partnership with other like-minded countries to defend against authoritarian influence at international forums. All of these measures will help to protect exiles and diasporas but they will also reinforce respect for human rights and promote fundamental freedoms – for all of us.

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