Every time there are more authoritarian governments that act outside their borders to repress dissidents, organizing kidnappings, assaults and even murders in third countries, according to a new report by the Freedom House group on “transnational repression” in 2022.
The study, published this Thursday, identifies China, Türkiye, Tajikistan, Russia and Egypt as the greatest perpetrators of this type of crime, which also includes irregular deportations of dissidents.
Among these, the Xi Jinping government is the most prolific: Since 2014, Beijing has been involved in 253 incidents of transnational repression, almost a third of all those registered by this organization for the defense of democracy, which has made these balances annually since 2021.
In 2022 alone, Freedom House has identified 79 incidents of transnational repression perpetrated by 20 governments. The most frequent are irregular extraditions, coercion and arrests.
China, for example, irregularly detains and extradites Uyghurs who flee the country for fear of being interned in re-education camps, something for which it receives help from countries like Saudi Arabia.
But the country that most dissidents arrested through irregular extraditions is Türkiye. Ankara authorities “have kidnapped more people through irregular extraditions than any other country in our database,” the organization said in a statement.
In 2022 there were two such arrests, one in Ukraine and one in Azerbaijan.
Russia, for its part, often helps other countries to perpetrate this type of crime on its territory, and is one of the most repressive states internationally.
Tajikistan, for example, took advantage of its links with Moscow to carry out a crackdown on the Pamiri ethnic group.
In 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has ordered the arrest of both journalists and citizens who have fled the country so as not to be mobilized to the front.
These objectors, recalled Freedom House, face many problems seeking asylum in European countries, making them more vulnerable to repression by the Kremlin.
On the other hand, nations like Iran, Nicaragua or North Korea regularly order murders of dissidents abroad.
The organization explained that many of these acts of violence target journalists, and recalled the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul (Turkey) in 2018.
In addition, in 2022, as a novelty, Djibouti and Bangladesh joined the list of countries that have committed acts of transnational repression.
“Despite these cases, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and other democratic countries have maintained high-level diplomatic cooperation with perpetrator states, including in immigration matters,” Freedom House denounced in the letter.
The organization requested that governments Democratic nations do more to facilitate access to asylum for potential victims of transnational repression, and develop a mechanism to track such incidents.
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