OUT OF SIGHT, NOT OUT OF REACH The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression abroad without their guardian’s permission, but guardianship practices remain deeply entrenched at a societal level.233 Guardianship has historically afforded a significant amount of control over freedom of movement. An official e-government app, Absher, included guardianship controls, notably allowing guardians to grant entry and exit visas from their mobile phones. Even when visa controls were loosened in August 2019 following criticism, the app was not immediately updated to reflect the changes.234 In parallel, the bin Salmanled government has used travel restrictions, likely numbering in the thousands, to control and coerce those they perceive as threats.235 Access to state documents while abroad, like those Khashoggi needed for his marriage, is another tool the Saudi government uses to control its citizens. The severe gender-based repression in Saudi Arabia results in women featuring more prominently in the country’s transnational repression campaign than in other cases. The severe gender-based repression in Saudi Arabia results in women featuring more prominently in the country’s transnational repression campaign than in other cases. Globally, women are less frequently the targets of transnational repression, and are more often collateral damage, used as leverage points in family targeting. However, 2 of the 10 physical cases of Saudi transnational repression documented by Freedom House involved women as targets, and there are many more instances where women are targeted in nonphysical ways. The gender component of the Saudi campaign may partially be due to familial patterns of control, but can also be attributed to the uniquely high profile of Saudi women's rights activists, which makes them targets of the state in their own right. 34 @FreedomHouse In one case of transnational repression identified by Freedom House, state and family repression overlapped. Dina Ali Lasloom fled Saudi Arabia in 2017 in an attempt to escape a forced marriage. While waiting for a connecting flight in the Philippines, Lasloom claimed that airport officials confiscated her passport and boarding pass, and detained her for 13 hours. Eventually her uncles arrived and she was forced– restrained by duct tape and screaming, according to an HRW report–onto a return flight bound for Saudi Arabia.236 The Saudi embassy in the Philippines said Lasloom’s rendition was a “family matter.” But while the details of Lasloom’s forced return and the role of Philippine authorities are murky, her rendition could not have occurred without the involvement of the Saudi state. The allegation that the Philippine authorities detained Lasloom and confiscated her passport points to the implementation of mobility controls by the Saudi authorities. By flagging or cancelling her passport, they could trigger Philippine intervention in her transit. Even if the event was instigated by a guardianship claim, the Saudi state is nevertheless extending its laws and authority beyond its own territory. Moreover, the bin Salman-led government may have additional concrete and personal reasons to act in cases like Lasloom’s. The number of Saudi asylum seekers has more than doubled in the two years after bin Salman’s ascension to the role of Crown Prince.237 As described in the New Yorker, “The implicit critique of this exodus was enough to stoke the ire of the Crown Prince.”238 The New Yorker report paints a chilling picture of how women who fled repressive family environments became targets of state repression. The women profiled reported that their bank accounts were frozen and their national ID cards were revoked; they also faced harassment by progovernment social media accounts, interrogation and harassment of family and friends residing in Saudi Arabia, run-ins with apparent Saudi operatives, and harassment by the Saudi embassy. In other words, women who flee Saudi Arabia’s gender-based repression face many of the state’s characteristic transnational repression tools. #TransnationalRepression