OUT OF SIGHT, NOT OUT OF REACH The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression almost in real time. Individuals may exit a state’s territory and continue to have a voice within it. More than ever before, people forced to flee abroad can engage in public debates through social media, run media outlets, campaign for human rights, and support dissident movements in the origin country.8 But for regimes in which there is no distinction between the state and the rule of a single leader or party, such participation is something that must be contained or controlled. In 58 percent of the cases Freedom House catalogued, the origin state accused the targeted individual of terrorism. At the same time, regimes’ capacity for transnational repression has also grown. The very digital technologies that enable cross-border communication also present opportunities for interference by an authoritarian regime. States use spyware, social media monitoring, and online harassment to disrupt and surveil exiles’ networks from thousands of miles away. The decreasing cost of these tools, and their availability both as software and as services sold in a largely unregulated international marketplace, means that any government willing to pay can acquire them.9 Expert analysis of the commercial surveillance market shows hundreds of companies selling a variety of tools around the world, with minimal oversight and no transparency.10 Spyware can also lead to more severe attacks. In her report on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard described evidence linking spyware to the killing.11 Even without special commercial software, social media platforms make digital intimidation and smear campaigns against exiles relatively simple. Particularly when combined with threats or actual violence against family members still in the origin country, these tools can be highly effective in convincing exiles to lower their profiles, sever their networks, or withdraw from activism altogether.12 The leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, put it succinctly in remarks on state television that he directed at the Chechen diaspora in 2016: “This modern age and technology allow us to know everything, and we can find any of you.”13 6 @FreedomHouse Perpetrator states also benefit from a changing global order in which security measures are increasingly used to control migration, travel, and asylum-seeking,14 and in which regional and international organizations, as well as co-opted national institutions, provide low-cost ways to target exiles. Asylum seekers and even recognized refugees in countries like Thailand and Turkey face backlogs that force them to wait—often for years—for rulings or resettlement to third countries. During this time, they are effectively confined in a territory where their origin state may still have considerable access to them, resulting in attacks, renditions, and even assassinations. For example, in March 2015, Tajik opposition leader Umarali Kuvvatov fled to Turkey and registered as an asylum seeker, but he was shot and killed on an Istanbul street before his case could be heard. Policies in democracies that are hostile to asylum requests, or even to forms of legal migration, make it easier for pursuing states to have their political opponents detained and returned. For instance, they can use false allegations to trigger detention or deportation by the host country’s institutions, which are primed to accelerate such procedures. In the United States, Russian national Alexey Kharis spent 15 months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention after being arrested on the basis of an Interpol notice.15 Such Interpol abuse is, in fact, disturbingly common. In the last two decades, numerous governments have learned that “red notices” and other notifications provide a cheap and easy means of reaching exiles. Contrary to popular belief, Interpol is not an international police agency, nor does it have a judicial function to determine the veracity of notices before they enter the system. It simply allows member states to share notifications about wanted criminals or missing persons with one another. Technological changes since 2002 have made it much easier to upload notifications, resulting in an exponential increase that has far outstripped the organization’s capacity to provide even minimal vetting. By uploading spurious notices into the system, regimes can have exiles detained or deported, sometimes even if they are already recognized as refugees.16 The system can also be used to falsely report passports as lost or stolen, preventing exiles from traveling or causing them to be detained when they do. Despite years of civil society advocacy on the topic, and some improvements to the vetting process, Interpol abuse remains a widespread problem. At least 12 states abused Interpol notices specifically to detain exiles during the time period examined in this report. #TransnationalRepression