Transnational repression is a type of political repression conducted by a state outside its borders. It often involves targeting political dissidents or critical members of diaspora communities abroad and can take the forms of assassinations and/or enforced disappearances of citizens, among others. [1] [2] [3] Freedom House has documented its rise worldwide in recent years, prompting response from agencies such as the FBI. [4] [5]
According to Freedom House, the most prolific actors involved in transnational repression in 2022 were the governments of China, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, and Tajikistan. [6] Other nations of concern included Iran, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia. [7]
International relations scholar Laurie Brand asserts that autocracies face specific challenges and opportunities in the international sphere that affect authoritarian practices. Specifically, the rise of transnationalism and practices that transcend national borders have led autocracies to develop strategies aiming to manage their citizens' migration. [8] According to political scientist Gerasimos Tsourapas, global autocracies engage in complex strategies of transnational repression, legitimation, and co-optation as well as cooperation with non-state actors. [9]
Sociologist Dana M. Moss has argued for a typology of transnational repression, [10] as described below:
Lethal retribution | The actual or attempted assassinations of dissidents abroad by regime agents or proxies. |
Threats | Verbal or written warnings directed to members of the diaspora, including the summoning of individuals by regime officials to their embassies for this purpose. |
Surveillance | The gathering and sending of information about co-nationals to the state security apparatus by informant networks composed of regime agents, loyalists, and coerced individuals. |
Exile | The direct and indirect banishment of dissidents from the home country, including when the threat of physical confinement and harm prevents activists from returning. |
Withdrawing scholarships | The rescinding of students’ state benefits for refusing to participate in regime-mandated actions or organizations abroad. |
Proxy punishment | The harassment, physical confinement, and/or bodily harm of relatives in the home-country as a means of information-gathering and retribution against dissidents abroad. |
In June 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that Turkey's failure to ratify Sweden's NATO membership bid is part of its campaign of transnational repression. [11] [12]
During a June 2022 briefing by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, Wang Wenbin accused the US and UK of cooperating in transnational repression of Julian Assange. [13]
In December 2021, the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act became law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. [14] The law aims to combat abuse of Interpol notices. [15] [16]
In March 2023, a bipartisan group of United States senators introduced the Transnational Repression Policy Act. [17] [18] The proposed law would mandate that the intelligence community identify and share information about perpetrators of transnational repression in the United States. [19] In October 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that the US does not have adequate laws to combat acts of transnational repression. [20]
In March 2022, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken characterized the Chinese government's attempts to silence Uyghur activists outside its borders as part of a campaign of transnational repression. [21] [22]
In April 2023, the United States Department of Justice indicted Chinese operatives with crimes related to a transnational repression campaign utilizing a Chinese police overseas service station in Manhattan. [23] [24] Following the indictments, the FBI described seeing an "inflection point in the tactics and tools and the level of risk and the level of threat" in transnational repression. [25]
In July 2023, the United States Department of State labeled the Hong Kong Police Force's bounties on eight prominent dissidents living abroad as an instance of "transnational repression efforts." [26] [27]
A 2022 Center for American Progress reported that some of the most notable transnational repression efforts of the Chinese government, such as the Causeway Bay Books disappearances, have been coordinated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The report called for initiatives to better understand the MPS' activities overseas. [28]
A 2023 report published by the University of Sheffield called for increased use of Magnitsky legislation in response to the transnational repression of the Uyghur diaspora. [29] A report the same year by Mohamed Soltan's nonprofit Freedom Initiative stated that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have become "... more innovative and emboldened" in carrying out acts of transnational repression. [30]
In 2023, the Index on Censorship has referred to the Chinese government's attempts to censor artist Badiucao's overseas exhibitions as an example of transnational repression. [31]
In 2023, the Sikh Coalition wrote to the federal government to warn about Indian transnational repression and rising Hindu nationalist threats in the US in the aftermath of the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar. [32]
Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest state in the Arab world, with a reported population of 32,175,224 as of 2022. 41.6% of inhabitants are immigrants. Saudi Arabia has experienced a population explosion in the last 40 years, and continues to grow at a rate of 1.62% per year.
Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere. Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another. A migrant emigrates from their old country, and immigrates to their new country. Thus, both emigration and immigration describe migration, but from different countries' perspectives.
The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is a department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tasked with "united front work." It gathers intelligence on, manages relations with, and attempts to gain influence over elite individuals and organizations inside and outside mainland China, including in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in other countries.
Overseas Vietnamese refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the United States.
James Stapleton Roy is a former senior United States diplomat specializing in Asian affairs. A fluent Chinese speaker, Roy spent much of his career in East Asia, where his assignments included twice in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Beijing, once in Singapore, and Jakarta. He also specialize in Soviet affairs, and had served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Roy also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2000.
The Uyghur American Association is a prominent Uyghur American non-profit advocacy organization based in Washington, D. C. in the United States. It was established in 1998 by a group of Uyghur overseas activists to raise the public awareness of the Uyghur people, who primarily reside in Xinjiang, China, also known as East Turkestan. The Uyghur American Association is an affiliate organization of the World Uyghur Congress and works to promote the Uyghur culture and improved human rights conditions for Uyghurs.
The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council (OCAO) is an external name of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Prior to 2018, OCAO was an administrative office under the State Council of the People's Republic of China responsible for liaising with and influencing overseas Chinese as part of its united front efforts. Due to the 2018 party and government reform in China, OCAO was merged into the UFWD, with its functions being taken up by the department. Under the arrangement "one institution with two names", UFWD reserves the name "Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council", generally used when dealing in public statements and dealing with the outside world.
The Egyptian diaspora consists of citizens of Egypt abroad sharing a common culture and Egyptian Arabic language. The phenomenon of Egyptians emigrating from Egypt was rare until Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power after overthrowing the monarchy in 1952. Before then, Cleland's 1936 declaration remained valid, that "Egyptians have the reputation of preferring their own soil. Few ever leave except to study or travel; and they always return... Egyptians do not emigrate".
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is an international organization of exiled Uyghur groups that claims to "represent the collective interest of the Uyghur people" both inside and outside of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The World Uyghur Congress claims to be a nonviolent and peaceful movement that opposes what it considers to be the Chinese "occupation" of 'East Turkestan' and advocates rejection of totalitarianism, religious intolerance and terrorism as an instrument of policy. It has been called the "largest representative body of Uyghurs around the world" and uses more moderate methods of human rights advocacy to influence the Chinese government within the international community in contrast to more radical Uyghur organizations.
Overseas Indians, officially Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origin (PIOs) are Indians who reside or originate outside of India. According to the Government of India, Non-Resident Indians are citizens of India who currently are not living in India, while the term People of Indian Origin refers to people of Indian birth or ancestry who are citizens of countries other than India. Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) is given to People of Indian Origin and to persons who are not People of Indian Origin but married to Indian citizen or People of Indian Origin. Persons with OCI status are known as Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs). The OCI status is a permanent visa for visiting India with a foreign passport.
The China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR) is an umbrella organization, founded in 1988, by the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to promote unification between mainland China and Taiwan on terms defined solely by the People's Republic of China. Unification is couched in a one country, two systems framework, though critics categorize it as annexation. According to scholar Anne-Marie Brady, in addition to promoting unification, "the organization also engages in a range of activities which support Chinese foreign policy goals, including block-voting and fund-raising for ethnic Chinese political candidates who agree to support their organization's agenda." The main council oversees over 200 chapters in multiple countries.
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., often shortened to Hikvision, is a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Due to its involvement in mass surveillance of Uyghurs, the Xinjiang internment camps, and national security concerns, the company has been placed under sanctions from the U.S. and European governments.
Operation Fox Hunt is a Chinese government covert global operation whose purported aim is anti-corruption under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration. As of 2017, it has led to the arrest of over 40 of its 100 most wanted globally. It has been accused of targeting Chinese dissidents living abroad to stop their activism under the guise of returning corrupt Chinese nationals to China to face criminal charges.
Central Asians in the United States are Americans with ancestry from Central Asia. They include Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek individuals. People of Afghan, Baloch, and Uyghur descent are also sometimes classified as Central Asians. The United States census does not mention Central Asians under any category.
The Xinjiang papers are a collection of more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents describing the government policy regarding Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. In November 2019, journalists Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley at The New York Times broke the story that characterized the documents as "one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China's ruling Communist Party in decades." According to The New York Times, the documents were leaked by a source inside the Chinese Communist Party and include a breakdown of how China created and organized the Xinjiang internment camps.
The Chinese government is committing a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as persecution or as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo. It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The Chinese government began to wind down the camps in 2019. Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the formal penal system.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a research-based advocacy organization located in Washington, D.C. that promotes human rights for Uyghurs. According to the UHRP, its main goal is "promoting human rights and democracy for Uyghurs and others living in East Turkistan" through research-based advocacy.
Gerasimos Tsourapas is a professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow. He currently serves as the Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies Association and is the Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies. His main areas of research and teaching are the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas, with particular expertise on cross-border mobility across the Global South.
Transnational repression by China refers to efforts by the Chinese government to exert control and silence dissent beyond its national borders. This phenomenon targets groups and individuals perceived as threats or critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The methods include digital surveillance, physical intimidation, coercion, and misuse of international legal systems.
Transnational repression by Russia refers to efforts by the Russian government to control its diaspora and exiles. This phenomenon targets former insiders and individuals perceived as threats to the government's security. The methods include assassination, manipulation of the Interpol notice system, and surveillance. Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia's Chechen Republic, conducts a total repression campaign against Chechen exiles.
汪文斌称,英国在配合美国逮捕引渡阿桑奇方面可谓不遗余力,迅速推进相关程序,充分显示英方维系同美特殊关系的忠诚,以及美英配合对特定人士跨国镇压的事实。