DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression June 2022 Defending Democracy in Exile by Yana Gorokhovskaia and Isabel Linzer O ver the past year, governments around the world have engaged in increasingly brazen attempts to stifle dissent by attacking critics who live abroad. Belarusian authorities forced an international airliner to land so they could detain a journalist who was on board. Iranian agents conspired to kidnap a women’s rights activist from her home in Brooklyn. Turkish intelligence officers abducted the nephew of a political figure from outside a police station in Nairobi. These audacious acts of transnational repression, in which governments reach across national borders to silence opposition among diaspora and exile communities, demonstrated a dangerous disregard for international law, democratic norms, and state sovereignty. This report, the second in a series by Freedom House on transnational repression, examines the ways in which nondemocratic governments are pursuing their critics abroad, what governments that host exiles and diasporas can do to protect individuals targeted by foreign states, and where gaps in existing safeguards remain. The research showed that: • Despite growing awareness of the problem, transnational repression remains a global threat to human rights and democratic values because few tools exist to protect its intended targets. People who are brave enough to stand up to autocrats can feel abandoned. As one human rights defender described it, “If I’m being honest with you, we’re really alone in this.”1 While autocrats in origin states work together to threaten them, exile and diaspora communities must contend with unprepared immigration and security agencies in host countries. They are named in abusive Interpol notices, experience reprisals for interacting with UN agencies, and must withstand sophisticated digital campaigns designed to surveil and harass them. The tactics of transnational repression are powerful because they have evolved to take advantage of the connection and openness brought by globalization. Perpetrator states have turned institutions and practices of host governments, international partnerships, and communication technologies against the vulnerable people they shelter. More governments around the world are using transnational repression to silence dissidents. There is evidence that authorities in at least four countries—Belarus, Nigeria, Comoros, and Algeria— targeted dissidents abroad for the first time in 2021. They joined 32 other governments that were already known to be perpetrators of physical acts of transnational repression. Freedom House has recorded 735 incidents of direct, physical transnational repression that occurred between January 2014 and December 2021, with 85 incidents in 2021 alone. Transnational repression has evolved to take advantage of the connection and openness brought by globalization. • Authoritarian governments are cooperating in their pursuit of exiles and diaspora residents because they share an illiberal set of values. In 74 percent of the incidents of transnational repression that took place freedomhouse.org 1