Autocratic nations are reaching across borders to silence critics – and so far nothing seems to stop them

Francesca Lessa

Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati survived an assassination attempt outside his home in Wimbledon, south London, in late March 2024. Eighteen months earlier, the London-based independent television channel Iran International, for which Zeraati worked, had temporarily relocated to Washington DC over threats that they believe come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Both incidents are examples of how it seems that a government can target an individual or organisation based outside their borders, with terrifying results. According to the latest research from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenberg, 71% of the world’s population lived in autocracies in 2023 ten years ago it was 48%. But what’s also new is that autocracies as well as some other nations are increasingly reaching across their borders to target people living abroad, enforcing the idea that they can reach their critics wherever they live.

This kind of state action, taken outside national borders, is known as transnational repression, and is becoming more widespread. The Chinese government is seen as the biggest perpetrator, sometimes using violence to close down criticism or protests against its regime, held in other countries.

More than 20% of the world’s governments are believed to have taken this kind of action outside their borders in the past ten years. These included assassinations, abductions, assaults, detentions and unlawful deportations, according to the NGO Freedom House. These are aimed at forcibly silencing exiled political activists, journalists, former regime insiders and members of ethnic or religious minorities. In 2023, 125 such incidents were committed by 25 countries.

While the majority of countries committing such practices tend to be autocracies, a number of democracies have also taken action across borders, including Israel, Hungary, India and Turkey, according to the report. In 2023, six countries engaged in these practices for the first time, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador and Yemen.

Freedom House recorded 1,034 physical attacks between 2014 and 2023, committed by 44 governments in 100 target countries. China, Turkey, Tajikistan, Russia and Egypt are the most prolific perpetrators, with China accounting for a quarter of all incidents.

This type of terror tactic can take many forms. Freedom House has noted that governments increasingly cooperated to help target exiled dissidents. In 74% of the incidents of transnational repression that took place in 2021, both the origin and the host countries were rated “not free” by Freedom House.

Awareness of this type of cross-border action is growing. Both human rights groups and academics are now systematically tracking attacks. And several governments, including the US and Australia, have committed to taking action to combat these practices. A bill was introduced in the US Senate in 2023 to specifically tackle transnational repression by foreign governments in the US and abroad.

I studied the increasing levels of cooperation in transnational repression by different nations in a recent article published in International Studies Quarterly. We look at why states, which are normally reluctant to collaborate, do so when it comes to silencing dissidents abroad.

There are historical parallels between what happened during Operation Condor in South America and what’s happening today. Operation Condor was a system that Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay started using in late 1975 with the backing of the US. It was aimed at persecuting exiles. Operation Condor was the most sophisticated, institutionalised and coordinated scheme ever established to persecute citizens who had been forced to flee their homeland.

Three factors were found to explain why this form of repression was able to be used at the time and why countries agreed to cooperate. First, politically active exiled dissidents constituted a threat to the reputation and survival of South America’s ruling juntas. They successfully named and shamed the region’s military regimes, discrediting their international public images given the human rights violations perpetrated and resulting in the US cutting funding to Uruguay in 1976 and Argentina in 1977.

Second, these autocracies, which came to power between 1964 and 1976, drew inspiration from the US National Security Doctrine and the French School of Counterinsurgency. In both, security was considered more important than human rights.

Finally, two countries catalysed efforts to cooperate in this kind of action. Chile pushed for the formal creation of Operation Condor in 1975. Argentina then expanded it to include Brazil, Peru and Ecuador between 1976 and 1978. This significantly widened Operation Condor’s scope for action to most of South America.

Operation Condor was the only regional organisation to be created to hunt down political opponents across borders. Lessons from this historical experience are relevant today.

Cooperation in transnational repression in the last few years also occurs in regional clusters, as shown by research by academics and human rights groups. These groups of nations include, for instance, Belarus, Russia and Tajikistan, as well as Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

In recent years these south-east Asian countries have closely collaborated to persecute, arbitrarily arrest and forcibly repatriate exiled activists and refugees, according to the media, the UN and international human rights NGOs.

Second, one or more countries, predominantly Russia and Turkey, have worked together on efforts to repress critics over a significant period. Third, some regional organisations, of authoritarian nature, often enable cooperation in transnational repression, or at least create unsafe environments for migrating dissidents.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Gulf Cooperation Council are examples, since they “have expanded their collective efforts against exiles”, according to some sources. SCO member states, especially Russia, China and Uzbekistan, have repeatedly used the organisation to pursue political opponents abroad and persecute them as criminals. This shows the organisation’s role as a platform for the diffusion and consolidation of authoritarian principles.

Countries engaging in this kind of political repression today often wish to silence dissent wherever it occurs. These countries are acting in complete disregard of established principles of international law and international relations, such as sovereignty and the protection of refugees, and seem to be expanding their operations. It remains to be seen if there’s anything that the rest of the international community can do to reverse this terrifying trend, but at least it has started trying.