Repressive governments ‘aggressively disregarding US laws to threaten’ dissidents in exile, watchdog says

Activists and dissidents in exile across the world are being targeted by their repressive home governments, which are using increasingly aggressive tactics, including in the US, according to a new report.

Pro-democracy think tank and watchdog Freedom House said in a report published on Thursday that they registered 85 new incidents of “public, direct, physical incidents of transnational repression” last year.

Between 2014 and the end of 2021, the total number of such incidents was 735. The watchdog discovered that Iran, China, Egypt, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have deployed such strategies within the United States.

Those governments are “increasingly and more aggressively disregarding US laws to threaten, harass, surveil, stalk, and even plot to physically harm people across the country”, Freedom House said.

The Soviet Union often conducted international operations to kill those they considered “enemies of the state”, The Washington Post noted.

“We found 36 origin states using physical transnational repression in 84 host countries since 2014,” Fredom House states.

Yana Gorokhovskaia at the think tank told The Post that some foreign governments now act “brazen, even outlandish”.

She added that repressive and authoritarian governments are now working together to push the idea that “people do not have the right to criticise those in power, no matter where they are in the world — not only at home but once they leave home as well”.

Iranian American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad appeared to be targeted by a plot in Brooklyn in the summer of 2021 that possibly could have led to her being abducted from a waterfront area in New York City and taken away by speedboat and possibly out of the country.

In a statement last July about the plan, FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney Jr said that “this is not some far-fetched movie plot. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a US-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran”.

Ms Gorokhovskaia said that the report didn’t include incidents such as online abuse, hacking, blackmail through threats to family members and friends still living in the home country.

A New York City police officer from Tibet was charged in 2020 with being an illegal agent working for China and using his job to collect information about the Tibetan diaspora. Baimadajie Angwang was granted US asylum when he was 17 after claiming that he was facing torture if he returned to China.

Freedom House interviewed people living in the US after fleeing repression elsewhere and how repression from home has affected their lives.

Sardar Pashaei from Iran, a former wrestler and activist, told Freedom House, “when you don’t feel safe in your house in the US, that’s a disaster”.

“That’s a shame … Where else on this planet should we go to feel safe?” he added.

The Justice Department has started indicting people connected to the practice of transnational repression and the FBI has been tracking crimes and setup a site that provides advice and boosts awareness.

But Freedom House has pointed to the ardious immigration process, including for those with legitimate asylum cases.

Some of the countries taregting their own people abroad are also allies of the US, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khasoggi, a permanent resident in the US, in Istanbul, Turkey, brought attention to the transational repression of the oil-rich kingdom.

But the US has since attempted to mend ties with the country, and de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was was never personally sanctioned.

An anonymous Saudi living in the US told Freedom House that “MBS was not forgiven, but he was not sanctioned. He was not included”.

“Right after that, things quickly changed for us. … It seemed like there was a reaction from the Saudi government that, okay, there’s no consequences. We can do whatever we want,” the individiual added.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that President Joe Biden would travel to Saudi Arabia this month to try to lower gas prices in the US and further isolate Russia following it invasion of Ukraine. As a candidate, Mr Biden vowed to punish the country for the killing of Mr Khasoggi.

Authoritarianism has been rising while democracy has been declining, Freedom House notes, making any effort to fight transnational repression more difficult.

But the explosion of social media and online communication is creating new problems for repressive regimes.

“There have always been people in exile and people who have remained engaged in the politics of their homeland from exile. But it’s undeniable that people’s voices are amplified by being online, by social media platforms,” Ms Gorokhovskaia told The Post.

“There is this feedback loop. They can stay in touch with what’s happening at home, and they can be advocates on behalf of causes and movements at home from abroad,” she added.