(C) Freedom House
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TNR Watch: Lost and Found [1]
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Date: 2024-06
Self-Kidnappings: In December 2023, 17-year-old Chinese exchange student Kai Zhuang mysteriously disappeared from his residence in Salt Lake City, Utah. Days later, local police found him shivering in a tent on a mountainside. The high school student had fallen victim to a cyberkidnapping scheme in which remote Chinese criminals—claiming to be government officials—convinced him to abscond and take photos of himself in distress in order to extort his relatives in China. (Scammers regularly threaten susceptible Chinese students and those from other countries with tactics of transnational repression such as coercion by proxy or threats of deportation.) Back home, Zhuang’s family paid $80,000 in ransom money to the criminals who orchestrated his self-kidnapping. This incident and several similar cases prompted the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to release a public service announcement to alert people of the scam, in which Chinese students are often targeted.
Climate of Fear: Cybercriminals have used a variety of tactics to successfully prey on the fears of overseas Chinese nationals and students, who are also subject to the Chinese government’s far-reaching campaign of transnational repression. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses the biggest threat to international students on American campuses, employing operatives to surveil Chinese nationals, disrupt prodemocracy events, and intimidate their family members in China. Additionally, the CCP’s establishment of illegal overseas police stations in the United States and other countries has underscored the lengths to which Beijing will go to surveil members of the diaspora.
For many diaspora members, transnational repression is an everyday threat that contributes to feelings of uncertainty and mistrust within their own communities, especially as it relates to the risk of surveillance. The arrest of six Uyghur spies by Turkish authorities in February 2024 came as Turkey-based Uyghur community leaders reported a surge in concerns about suspicious visitors to Uyghur establishments. Rwandan asylum seekers in some diaspora communities hesitate to seek assistance from local refugee agencies or the UN Refugee Agency out of fear that these institutions cooperate with and host members of the Rwandan Community Abroad, a constellation of associations linked to Rwandan diplomatic missions around the world. Likewise, Eritrean asylum seekers have expressed fears that Eritrean government operatives posing as interpreters have infiltrated European migration agencies.
Resilience: The ultimate goal of transnational repression is to intimidate diaspora communities to the extent that they fear speaking out against abuses committed by authorities in their origin state. The more elaborate the tactics employed by perpetrator governments, the greater the sense of confusion and paranoia among potential targets. Yet often those most vulnerable remain defiant in the face of these extraterritorial threats. Independent Chinese students have mobilized on campuses to challenge CCP narratives in recent years. Journalists at Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have used this cross-border harassment as motivation to “dig deeper” in their work. It is thus incumbent upon host governments to help enhance the resilience of brave members of these communities and take seriously their concerns.
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https://freedomhouse.org/article/tnr-watch-lost-and-found
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