Freedom House of political activism and all but one engaged in blogging or journalism, with YouTube, radio, and social media platforms being the most common mediums. Freedom House documented fewer cases of transnational repression by Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, but campaigns by all three took place in Thailand. Thailand detained and rendered two Cambodian exiles in 2018 at the apparent request of the Cambodian government, and Laos is reportedly responsible for a rendition and an unexplained disappearance in Thailand. A prominent Vietnamese blogger and government critic was rendered from Bangkok in 2019. Separately, four Vietnamese activists in Cambodia suffered an acid attack in 2017, believed to have been ordered by Vietnamese authorities. Vietnam has also operated farther afield. Trinh Xuân Thanh, a Vietnamese businessman, asylum seeker, and former Communist Party official, was kidnapped from Berlin’s Tiergarten park in 2017 along with a companion. The pair were rendered to Vietnam, where Thanh was sentenced to two life terms in prison. Vietnamese authorities apparently dispatched a seven-person intelligence team to carry out the operation.297 In addition to the four Southeast Asian countries, Pakistan, Bhutan, North Korea, and India have also targeted their nationals abroad. A Pakistani blogger living in the Netherlands, who had previously been detained and tortured for his work, was assaulted in February 2020 with suspected government involvement, and there were reports that his family members in Pakistan were also harassed.298 In 2019, the United Arab Emirates rendered a Baloch activist to Pakistan after holding him incommunicado for seven months.299 In 2014, a Bhutanese human rights activist and refugee who lived in exile in Nepal traveled to India for his human rights work, where he was arrested and rendered in a Bhutanese law enforcement operation.300 India is the only origin state rated Free in Freedom in the World that is known to engage in physical forms of transnational repression. In 2015, an activist from India who had been granted asylum in the United Kingdom was detained in Portugal on an Interpol notice.301 Also in 2015, India rendered an alleged member of an insurgent group from Bangladesh’s capital, in collaboration with Bangladeshi law enforcement.302 North Korea has assassinated, rendered, and unlawfully deported its nationals abroad. Most well-known is the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s half-brother Kim Jongnam in Malaysia in 2017, by North Korean agents and two accomplices who claimed they were tricked into poisoning him.303 The North Korean government has also rendered and unlawfully deported defectors, including abducting a defector who had become a journalist in South Korea from the China-North Korea border. North Korea is also known to use mobility controls, family targeting, digital threats, and spyware to target those outside of the country. India is the only origin state rated Free in Freedom in the World that is known to engage in physical forms of transnational repression. There are many more host countries for transnational repression in the region, including Afghanistan, which detained four Turkish teachers; Australia, where Chinese and Rwandan exiles have been threatened and face family targeting; Indonesia, the site of a Chinese assassination and a Turkish rendition; Malaysia, where dozens of Egyptian, Turkish, Chinese, and Thai citizens have been rendered; Mongolia, where Gülenists from Turkey have been targeted; Myanmar, which rendered a Turkish national and Chinese human rights defenders; the Philippines, where a Saudi woman was rendered; and South Korea, which unlawfully deported a Chinese businessman. freedomhouse.org 45