DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression Introduction S ergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned spy, and his daughter were found unconscious and violently ill on a park bench in Salisbury in March 2018. Authorities soon determined that they had been poisoned in an assassination attempt perpetrated by Moscow. The UK responded by declaring 23 Russian diplomats personae non gratae, freezing certain Russian state assets, and taking other symbolic diplomatic measures. The government successfully galvanized the European Union and several other allied governments into taking parallel measures. Britain’s response to the Skripal poisoning was rapid and forceful. However, the attack was far from the only incident of transnational repression to have happened in the UK. A decade earlier, the Russian government had poisoned another former insider, Alexander Litvinenko, with radioactive material.1 In addition to Russians, people from Rwanda, Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, China, and Equatorial Guinea have been targeted in the UK in recent years.2 The UK government demonstrates a high level of awareness of transnational repression in its security policy, particularly through its assessment of “transnational state threats.” Authorities take proactive measures, such as providing threat to life warnings to people targeted by assassination plots. However, conflicting political interests appear to hamper a robust response in other areas. The government’s accountability efforts and policy reviews following attacks against Skripal, exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and exiled Belarusian activist Raman Pratasevich stand in contrast to its ongoing partnerships with the governments of Bahrain and Rwanda. Restrictive asylum policies—most recently the 2021 Nationality and Borders Act and the accompanying plan to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda—also place vulnerable refugees at greater risk. Suggested citation: Yana Gorokhovskaia and Isabel Linzer, “Case Study: United Kingdom,” in Defending Democracy in Exile: Policy Responses to Transnational Repression (Washington, DC: Freedom House, June 2022), https://freedomhouse.org/report/ transnational-repression/united-kingdom. 2 @FreedomHouse #TransnationalRepression