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Hundreds of protesters with signs and flags in front of a capital building.

Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach

Download the Report Policy Recommendations
Understanding Transnational Repression

What is Transnational Repression?

It is governments reaching across borders to silence dissent among diasporas and exiles, including through assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, digital threats, Interpol abuse, and family intimidation.

It is a daily assault on civilians everywhere — including in democracies like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Australia.

Who is at risk?|Everyday People

Critical voices that challenge authoritarian rule become voices to silence. Journalists and human rights defenders. Diaspora groups and family members of exiles. Political activists, dissidents and civil society leaders.

What appear to be isolated incidents when viewed separately—an assassination here, a kidnapping there—in fact form a constant threat across the world that is affecting the lives of millions of people and changing how activists, journalists, and regular individuals go about their lives. Transnational repression is no longer an exceptional tool, but a normal and institutionalized practice for dozens of countries that seek to control their citizens abroad.

Its impact on the rights of victims is severe. Even those who are not directly targeted may decide based on the threat against their community to remain silent. This is true of the most extreme violence: a single killing or rendition sends ripples throughout a huge circle of people. But even digital threats or family intimidation—the easiest and most common forms of transnational repression—create an atmosphere of fear among exiles that pervades everyday activities.

Jamal Khashoggi
Assassinated

Jamal Khashoggi was a prominent Saudi journalist who had formerly been close to the monarchy, but grew disillusioned with its repressive nature. He moved abroad in 2017 and began writing about democracy, including as a columnist for The Washington Post. In October 2018, he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents necessary for his upcoming marriage. Saudi agents murdered him in the consulate and dismembered his body while his fiancée waited outside for him to emerge.

Origin Country
Saudi Arabia
Host Country
Turkey
Jamal Khashoggi
Masih Alinejad
Family Targeted

Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, author, and women’s rights and political activist who left Iran in 2009 and lives in the United States. In 2018, her sister in Iran was forced to go on state TV to denounce her. In September 2019, her brother Alireza was arrested in Iran, and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. In April 2020, her mother was also detained and questioned. Like many other Iranian journalists abroad, Alinejad says she receives constant digital and physical threats against her life.

Origin Country
Iran
Host Country
United States
Masih Alinejad
Paul Rusesabagina
Forcibly Rendered

Paul Rusesabagina is a political activist best known as the real-life hero of the movie Hotel Rwanda. He fled Rwanda in the 1990s after being warned of an assassination plot against him. He became a vocal critic of the government, first living in Belgium and then relocating again to the United States to avoid persecution. In August 2020 the Rwandan government kidnapped him while he was transiting through Dubai, United Arab Emirates. After being held for at least three days incommunicado, he reappeared in custody in Rwanda, where he was charged with terrorism.

Origin Country
Rwanda
Host Country
United Arab Emirates
Paul Rusesabagina
Gui Minhai
Forcibly Rendered

Gui Minhai is a Chinese-born, Hong Kong-based, Swedish citizen who worked as a book publisher and bookstore owner. His publishing included books on the personal lives of prominent members of the Chinese Communist Party. He was kidnapped from his apartment in Thailand in October 2015. He resurfaced in China months later during a state television appearance in which he claimed he had turned himself in for decade-old drunk driving charges. He was released from prison after two years, but was again arrested in early 2018. In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced him to 10 years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence overseas.” 

Origin Country
China
Host Country
Thailand
Gui Minhai
Praphan Pipithnamporn
Forcibly Rendered

Praphan Pipithnamporn is a Malaysian Thai anti-monarchy campaigner. She had been arrested multiple times in Thailand for her political activities and held in military detention. Fearing further persecution, she fled Thailand in January 2019 to Malaysia and registered as an asylum-seeker. Despite her protected status, however, Malaysian authorities arrested her in April 2019, and illegally returned her to Thailand in May that year.

Origin Country
Thailand
Host Country
Malaysia
Praphan Pipithnamporn
Loujain al-Hathloul
Forcibly Rendered

Loujain al-Hathloul is a Saudi human rights activist known in particular for her campaigning for women’s rights in a strictly patriarchal society. In March 2018, she was detained in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and rendered on a private plane to Saudi Arabia. She was initially released, but two months later Saudi authorities arrested her again. She was held incommunicado for 10 months, during which time she was tortured. In December 2020 she was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.

Origin Country
Saudi Arabia
Host Country
United Arab Emirates
Loujain al-Hathloul

Origin & Host|Countries

Transnational Repression takes place all over the world. We found 31 origin states using physical transnational repression in 79 host countries since 2014.

Around the globe, states are employing a diverse and aggressive toolbox of tactics to control their citizens, or sometimes even non-citizens, abroad.

3.5 Million People at Risk
608 Compiled Cases
31 Origin Countries
79 Host Countries

Transnational Repression Map

  • Origin + Host Country
  • Origin Country
  • Host Country

Each line represents a unique origin country-host country relationship through at least one incident of physical transnational repression. Every incident catalogued in the project is not mapped.

Country Case Studies

These are six countries that currently operate aggressive campaigns of transnational repression.

  • China

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Assassination, Rendition, Unlawful Deportation, Assault, Spyware, Family Intimidation, Digital Threat, Interpol Abuse, Mobility Controls
    • Targets

      Minority ethnic and religious groups, human rights defenders, former insiders.
  • Turkey

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Rendition, Digital Threat, Family Intimidation, Interpol Abuse, Mobility Controls
    • Targets

      Members of the Gülen movement, supporters of Kurdish autonomy, and leftists.
  • Rwanda

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Assassination, Rendition, Spyware, Family Intimidation, Digital Threat, Mobility Controls
    • Targets

      Members of the diaspora, especially those that challenge the government politically or question its version of Rwandan history.
  • Saudi Arabia

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Assassination, Rendition, Spyware, Family Intimidation, Digital Threat, Mobility Controls
    • Targets

      Political critics of the Saudi monarchy.
  • Russia

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Assassination, Rendition, Unlawful Deportation, Digital Threat, Spyware, Interpol Abuse
    • Targets

      Former insiders and defectors that threaten the Russian regime. Chechens face extreme threats from the Chechen Republic.
  • Iran

    • View Case Study
    • Tactics

      Assassination, Rendition, Spyware, Family Intimidation, Digital Threat, Interpol Abuse, Mobility Controls
    • Targets

      Political opponents of the ruling regime.

A Grave Threat To|Democracy & Freedom

The Tactics of Transnational Repression

Authoritarian countries are silencing exiles and diasporas with tactics of fear and repression.

These tactics violate exiles’ fundamental rights and undermine the rule of law in host countries.

Freedom House - Transnational Repression Threats
Direct Attacks

Origin country tactics that physically reach the individual targeted.

  • Assasination
  • Assault
  • Physical intimidation
  • Unexplained disappearance
  • Rendition, i.e. abduction or kidnapping
Freedom House - Transnational Repression Threats
Long Distance Threats

Origin country tactics that do not require physically reaching the individual targeted.

  • Coercion-by-proxy such as family intimidation
  • Digital threat
  • Spyware
Freedom House - Transnational Repression Mobility Controls
Mobility Controls

When origin countries restrict individuals’ ability to travel.

  • Passport revocation
  • Denial of consular service, including issuing or renewing passports
  • Reporting passports as lost or stolen in order to detain individuals in transit
Freedom House - Transnational Repression Co-opting
Co-opting other countries

When origin countries manipulate host country institutions like police or immigration authorities to harass, detain, or transfer individuals.

  • Unlawful deportation
  • Detention
  • Rendition
  • Interpol abuse

A Call For|Accountability & Resilience

Leaders must end impunity and limit opportunities to target exiles.

View the full set of policy recommendations.

US Domestic Policy
  • Examine potential updates to the US criminal code to enable the apprehension and prosecution of perpetrators, including through laws criminalizing espionage against refugees, and harassment from abroad against US-based refugees.
  • Ensure the United States maintains a robust refugee resettlement program to protect victims of transnational repression.  
  • Establish standardized outreach procedures for law enforcement engagement with vulnerable communities.  
  • Provide law enforcement training on transnational repression to better assist its victims and identify its perpetrators. 
Civil Society
  • Invest in “digital hygiene” trainings among targeted communities, reaching beyond professional activist and journalism circles.  
  • Increase engagement with law enforcement institutions that may encounter transnational repression in their work. 
US Foreign Policy
  • Impose targeted sanctions against those engaging in acts of transnational repression, including renditions and assassinations. 
  • Restrict security assistance to countries that persecute exiles and diasporas abroad. 
  • When reviewing export licensing applications, give extra scrutiny to applications for companies exporting products to countries rated as Not Free or Partly Free by Freedom House, in order to limit the export of commercial surveillance tools. 
  • Combat Interpol abuse by leveraging US influence in the organization to improve due process and punish abuse and by passing S. 2483, the Transnational Repression and Accountability Prevention (TRAP) Act. 
  • Release the CIA’s assessment of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. 
Other Democracies
  • Strengthen refugee resettlement programs, including by increasing quotas for accepting refugees and streamlining resettlement procedures 
  • Increase outreach to communities within democracies known to be targets for transnational repression. Targeted communities must know whom they can turn to and feel they can trust law enforcement.
  • Restrict the export of censorship and surveillance technology. 

Spread the word

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|Executive Summary

A Tajik opposition activist applies for asylum but is deported from Austria to Tajikistan, where he is tortured and imprisoned.

An Iranian journalist in Europe wakes up and opens his phone to a stream of death threats from Iran.

The family of a Uighur in Canada is put in a labor camp in China—when the family gets out, they call and warn their exiled daughter to keep quiet while a Chinese official looks on.

A Russian man who fled to the United States when security services stole his business is held on a frivolous Interpol notice and kept in US immigration detention for a year and a half.

A Rwandan opposition leader is abducted while in transit through the United Arab Emirates and reappears three days later in Kigali, facing trial for “terrorism.”

A Turkish teacher is pulled off the streets of Kosovo and bundled onto an airplane to Turkey.

Saudi officials asphyxiate and dismember a Saudi journalist inside the country’s consulate in Istanbul.
 
All of these are examples of “transnational repression,” or countries targeting their diasporas and exiles abroad in order to silence them. All of these are real events that happened in the last six years, emblematic of an enormous and growing threat to activists, journalists, and migrants the world over. All over the world, states are employing a diverse and aggressive toolbox of tactics to control their citizens, or sometimes even non-citizens, abroad.

This report is the product of an effort to understand the scale and scope of “transnational repression,” in which governments reach across national borders to silence dissent among their diaspora and exile communities. Freedom House assembled cases of transnational repression from public sources, including UN and government documents, human rights reports, and credible news outlets, in order to generate a detailed picture of this global phenomenon.

The project compiled a catalogue of 608 direct, physical cases of transnational repression since 2014. In each incident, the origin country’s authorities physically reached an individual living abroad, whether through detention, assault, physical intimidation, unlawful deportation, rendition, or suspected assassination. The list includes 31 origin states conducting physical transnational repression in 79 host countries. This total is certainly only partial; hundreds of other physical cases that lacked sufficient documentation, especially detentions and unlawful deportations, are not included in Freedom House’s count. Nevertheless, even this conservative enumeration shows that what often appear to be isolated incidents—an assassination here, a kidnapping there—in fact represent a pernicious and pervasive threat to human freedom and security.

Moreover, physical transnational repression is only the tip of the iceberg. The consequences of each physical attack ripple out into a larger community. And beyond the physical cases compiled for this report are the much more widespread tactics of “everyday” transnational repression: digital threats, spyware, and coercion by proxy, such as the imprisonment of exiles’ families. For millions of people around the world, transnational repression has become not an exceptional tool, but a common and institutionalized practice used by dozens of regimes to control people outside their borders.

Freedom House’s research shows that:

  • Transnational repression is becoming a “normal” phenomenon. The global review identified more governments, using the same tools, in more incidents than is typically understood. The states that run transnational repression campaigns deploy a broad spectrum of tactics against their perceived enemies, from spyware and family intimidation to renditions or assassinations.
  • Most physical transnational repression involves co-opting host governments in order to reach exiles. The most common forms of transnational repression—detentions and unlawful deportations at the origin state’s request—entail exploitation of the host country’s institutions. Most renditions also involve working closely with host country authorities to illegally transfer people to the origin country. In this way, transnational repression directly undermines the rule of law in the targeted host country.
  • The consequences for transnational repression are currently insufficient to deter further abuse. Stopping transnational repression will require reestablishing international norms that support universal due process and punish extraterritorial violence.
  • The full spectrum of transnational repression tactics matters. Online harassment, coercion by proxy, mobility controls, and use of spyware do not garner the same level of attention as assassinations, but these less visible forms of transnational repression are intimately connected to physical attacks. Any effective response to transnational repression needs to address this continuum of practices.

The report consists of an introduction, a description of the methods of transnational repression, case studies on six states—China, Rwanda, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—conducting significant transnational repression campaigns, regional summaries covering countries not in the case studies, and recommendations.

Freedom House’s recommendations focus on what policymakers can do to hold perpetrators accountable for transnational repression and increase resilience within democracies.

Consistent accountability, especially in the form of targeted sanctions, will raise the cost of transnational repression for the regimes in question. Resilience efforts, especially measures that reduce opportunities for authoritarian states to manipulate institutions within democracies, will make it harder to attack exiles and diaspora communities in practice.

A thorough approach to resilience must include the recognition that excessively harsh policies intended to deter migrants and asylum seekers facilitate the external exploitation of a host country’s institutions, making it more likely that a persecuted individual will be denied asylum, deported, or otherwise mistreated. In order to proactively counter transnational repression, host countries should build trust with migrants through sustained outreach that informs them about their rights and the resources available to protect them.

Transnational repression is a serious threat to human rights and to democracy around the world, but with accountability for perpetrators and compassion for its targets, it can be stopped.

About the project

The project was made possible through the generous support of the Achelis and Bodman Foundation.

To read more about the project, click here. Data is available on request from Freedom House through [email protected]. Please use the subject line “Transnational Repression Data Request.”

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