(C) Freedom House
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How Diplomats Enable Transnational Repression [1]
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Date: 2025-09
In February 2025, a London neighborhood council and the London Metropolitan Police withdrew their opposition to the Chinese government’s plans to construct a huge “super embassy” on the grounds of the old Royal Mint, only days after thousands of people had participated in a protest against the project. Embassies and consulates are meant to provide useful services to citizens from the home country and promote comity and understanding between nations. However, the London authorities’ about-face in favor of construction of the 5.5-acre Chinese facility has sparked fears among United Kingdom residents from China—some of whom are the targets of bounties imposed by Beijing—that it could be used to enable acts of transnational repression. Their worries are not unfounded, especially considering the involvement of Chinese consul-general Zheng Xiyuan in the beating of a protester at the Manchester consulate in 2022.
The dispute in London is emblematic of a larger, global dilemma. The Chinese government is just one of many authoritarian regimes that have employed diplomatic staff at embassies and consulates to spy on diaspora communities, threaten and harm exiled dissidents, and selectively deny them access to crucial services.
Watchful eyes
It is unsurprising that governments known for repressing citizens at home would use their diplomatic outposts to engage in similar efforts to silence dissent abroad, in contravention of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. One common transnational repression tactic made possible by these missions is the close monitoring of opposition movements. Throughout 2011, for example, Syrian and Libyan embassy officials tracked the participation of Syrian and Libyan nationals at Arab Spring rallies in the United States and Britain. They later shared this intelligence with officials back home, who put pressure on family members of the diaspora residents to rein in their activism overseas.
To aid their surveillance, embassy officials may develop relationships with diaspora members or force them to act as spies in their communities. Agents of the ruling party in Eritrea have regularly served as informants for embassies and stalked activists at foreign conferences. The Chinese government’s unparalleled campaign of transnational repression is made possible in part by this sort of synergy between diplomatic staff and co-opted diaspora residents. Embassy employees deliver guidance and funds to student groups affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, encouraging government-friendly associations to report outspoken students or disrupt protests. Chinese consulates have also employed Uyghurs and members of other persecuted ethnic minorities to collect information on their communities in Germany and Sweden.
Physical attacks and abductions
Diplomats and their associates may go beyond surveillance and interference, engaging in plots to physically harm or forcibly repatriate dissidents living abroad. The grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 is arguably the most infamous example of this practice. Yet it is only the tip of the iceberg. In 1980, the United Kingdom expelled Libyan ambassador Moussa Koussa, nicknamed “the envoy of death,” after he boasted about the murders of Libyan exiles. More recently, Turkish embassy officials have allegedly assisted their country’s intelligence service in the rendition of purported fugitives from places such as Kyrgyzstan and Kosovo back to Turkey. In January 2024, the Russian consul in Thailand unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Thai authorities to extradite members of the rock band Bi-2—who opposed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine—to Russia.
On many occasions, diplomatic personnel have directly assaulted individuals exercising their fundamental rights in host countries. Only a year after the Manchester incident, at least four Chinese consular representatives appeared alongside belligerent, pro-Beijing actors engaged in violence against protesters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
Access denied
In addition to carrying out espionage and physical intimidation, embassy and consulate staff representing authoritarian regimes often withhold access to key services and documents. As Freedom House has previously reported, the governments of at least 12 countries have denied consular services to their nationals abroad for political reasons. The diplomatic missions in question arbitrarily refuse to extend passports, certify birth or marriage certificates, or provide identity documents, leaving people trapped in limbo. Some governments, like that of Nicaragua, simply close consulates as a tool of repression.
One goal of the denial of services can be to lure a wanted individual back to the origin country. Saudi officials have offered one-way tickets home to activists and the relatives of former insiders, ostensibly to secure new passports. Similarly, the Egyptian government has ordered its missions in Turkey and the Persian Gulf states to direct dissidents back to Egypt for document renewals.
Other governments apply these restrictive consular practices more indiscriminately, exposing wider swaths of the diaspora to precarity. In September 2023, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka issued a decree that prevented consulates from renewing passports or granting other documents, effectively streamlining Minsk’s pursuit of anyone who participated in demonstrations against Lukashenka’s fraudulent 2020 reelection. The Turkmenistan government’s paranoia regarding exile activism is reflected in its consulates’ refusal to extend the passports of Turkey-based nationals and its efforts to funnel them back home.
Diplomatic outposts may also demand the compliance and fealty of diaspora members in exchange for services. To receive basic consular support, Eritreans must pay a 2 percent income tax. Rwandan missions have also coerced Rwandans abroad to join progovernment associations and take loyalty oaths in order to obtain passports or other legal certificates.
Accountability
While acknowledging the legitimate role played by embassies and consulates in assisting their nationals and strengthening relationships between governments, the authorities in host countries must make it clear that transnational repression is not a diplomatic privilege. In 2022, the US State Department relayed a circular note to embassies in Washington, warning that harassing and intimidating individuals in the United States departs from the “traditional and accepted functions of diplomatic and consular missions.” Receiving countries should also vet applicants for diplomatic visas to ensure that they have not engaged in transnational repression in their previous roles.
If these prevention efforts fail, then accountability measures may be necessary. Canada and the Netherlands have expelled Eritrean diplomats for imposing the diaspora tax on local Eritreans. Similarly, in 2024, the Canadian government banished six Indian diplomats for collecting information on alleged Sikh separatists in Canada.
As the British government nears a decision on the Chinese “super embassy” this summer, it should uphold its obligation to prioritize the safety and human rights of diaspora members and send a clear signal that no embassy in the United Kingdom will be allowed to serve as a hub for transnational repression.
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