How authoritarian regimes are targeting critics abroad

The end of November marked the second anniversary of China’s “white paper” protest movement against COVID lockdowns in 2022. Triggered by a fire in Xinjiang that claimed ten lives, demonstrations inside China turned increasingly political. At one point crowds in Shanghai chanted for the president and Communist party general secretary, Xi Jinping, to step down.

Outside China’s borders, members of Chinese diaspora communities held rallies in support of the demonstrators inside China. Many students overseas posted messages of solidarity.

But despite being far from China, these protesters were taking serious risks. Transnational repression — authoritarian states reaching across borders to silence dissent — is on the rise, fuelled by the confluence of digital communications and the worldwide advance of authoritarianism.

Yet democratic governments are failing to monitor such transnational human rights violations on their territory or properly support targets, as international law obliges them to do.

Chinese communities are by no means the only group facing systematic infringements on the exercise of basic rights from abroad. Data from the human rights organisation Freedom House has documented more than 1,000 cases of transnational repression committed by 44 governments against targets in 100 countries around the world since 2013.

A recent report from journalism organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres documented threats and attacks by Iran against exiled Iranian journalists including in the US, France, Germany and Sweden, with London identified as a particular “hotspot”.

The 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, allegedly at the hands of Indian security services, showed dictatorships aren’t the only perpetrators of cross-border human rights violations.

And that’s just the cases of physical violence and detention. Once we take into account the range of new techniques of coercion and surveillance opened up by digital communications and cross-border mobility, the scale of the problem becomes more apparent.

Widening scope of targets

Today, states can coerce without setting foot on the territory in which the target is located. Among other techniques, they can threaten family members, deploy digital surveillance and censorship, mount cyber-attacks and mobilise ferocious online harassment campaigns. The result is significant constraints on the exercise of human rights by significant numbers of people.

These transnational human rights violations are not limited to diaspora communities or foreign dissidents. Journalists, lawyers and activists have also become targets. UK author Michela Wrong has faced a coordinated campaign of online harassment by proxies of the Rwandan government over criticisms of Paul Kagame’s dictatorship. Pro-democracy Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai’s overseas legal team in London has been targeted by state-sponsored cyber-attacks and intimidation.

Our recent article the Journal of Human Rights Practice details this major blind spot in most countries’ human rights protection arrangements and suggests an institutional way forward.

Democratic complicity

Targeted people routinely struggle to obtain help from local authorities.

Yet governments are obliged to protect targets of transnational human rights violations. Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) obliges states to ensure civil and political rights “to all individuals within its territory”. It also mandates the adoption of “such laws or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized”. It requires that those whose rights are violated have an effective remedy.

But governments have failed to equip national bodies to meet these 21st-century threats to human rights.

Some governments have sought to raise awareness among police forces. But many of these human rights violations, particularly subtle forms like harassment of family members abroad, do not constitute crimes under current law.

Domestic intelligence agencies have taken an interest in the national security dimensions of transnational repression. But security agencies are ill-equipped to provide the public-facing support and assistance needed by those targeted, or to comprehensively monitor the problem.

So far, the issue has not been on the radar of specialised human rights institutions such as the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

Transnational rights protection offices

The effect of transnational repression is often silence – both from those being attacked or coerced and other members of their community. What is needed is a confidential contact point that can start systematically monitoring the problem from the perspective of protecting human rights.

It’s not enough to just approach the problem as a national security issue. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. It’s a serious constraint on the exercise of human rights affecting a wide array of groups.

Specialist national offices dedicated to the protection of targeted individuals would provide, at a minimum, a point of contact. These offices need to work to monitor transnational violations.

Their remit should include advising governments and helping develop domestic policy and legislative proposals. At an international level, they should coordinate to share effective methods and improve international protection frameworks.

These offices should be part of the standard institutional setup of human rights protection in states that have signed the ICCPR. As an integral element in ensuring democratic resilience and government-community relations, we suggest in our article that they could be appropriately resourced from national security budgets.

Governments need to recognise and act upon the obligations they have to support and protect human rights from transnational as well as domestic threats. At the moment it’s a serious blind spot in national human rights protection.

Andrew Chubb receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Kirsten Roberts Lyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.