4 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL WAR While acts of transnational repression have long been undertaken by states, researchers have noted that such acts are increasing as states are “integrated into a global system of transnational economic flows and international migration.”12 The following four categories of transnational repression emerge: y Direct attacks are those in which “an origin state carries out a targeted physical attack against an individual abroad.” y Co-opting other countries describes a situation where states manipulate other states “to act against a target through detention, unlawful deportation, and other types of forced renditions, which are authorized through pro forma but meaningless legal procedures.” y Mobility controls define tactics including “passport cancellation and denial of consular services, preventing the target from travelling or causing them to be detained.” y Threats from a distance include “online intimidation or surveillance and coercion by proxy, in which a person’s family, loved one, or business partner is threatened, imprisoned, or otherwise targeted.”13 In this report, we focus on the use of digital transnational repression, which falls under the final category of threats from a distance. Between 2014 and 2020 alone, researchers who studied transnational repression identified 608 cases of direct, physical transnational repression. This figure, which is likely incomplete due to the exclusion of cases that have no or insufficient public documentation, includes 31 states—China, Rwanda, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey among them—that have been conducting transnational repression in 79 host countries.14 It identifies a clear link between authoritarian perpetrators and overseas victims. In China, for example, victims included overseas Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, advocates for democracy in Hong Kong, and Taiwanese citizens. Likewise, the victims of Russian suppression efforts include Chechen citizens residing in Turkey, and it is well-documented that Saudi dissidents Jamal Khashoggi and Omar Abdulaziz were targeted by the Saudi regime.15 Despite the severity of the threat to the rights and freedoms of activists and dissidents outside their country of origin—as well as to democracy and the rule of law more generally—that is posed by transnational repression, perpetrators are rarely held to account 12 Ibid at 141. 13 Schenkkan and Linzer, Freedom House Report at 9. 14 Ibid at 2. 15 Ibid at 15–41.