Freedom House Tibetans overseas are also subject to sustained, systematic pressure from the CCP party-state that spans from neighboring Nepal to Europe and the United States. Only around 14,000 Tibetans reside in Nepal. But the “gentleman’s agreement” that allows Tibetans who reach Nepal to travel on to the exile Central Tibetan Administration’s headquarters in India made it the main conduit for Tibetans fleeing China. In recent years, this agreement has eroded under Chinese pressure. First, stricter mobility controls by China reduced the ability of Tibetans to flee the country, winnowing the number of those reaching Nepal from several thousand per year down to only 23 in 2019.89 At the same time, Tibetans who reached Nepal have been more vulnerable to return, as happened with six individuals who crossed the border in September 2019 but were immediately handed to Chinese authorities.90 The number of Tibetans able to flee may shrink even further. In October 2019, the Nepalese government and China signed a new agreement including a “Boundary Management System” and Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) that would expedite Nepalese handovers of Tibetans to China, either at the border or after they are inside Nepal.91 Like Uighurs, Tibetans around the world are subject to intimidation and espionage by Chinese agents. In September 2020, US federal authorities announced the arrest of an active New York Police Department officer of Tibetan descent who had worked with Chinese officials in the US to spy on the Tibetan community in and around New York City.92 The case resembles recent incidents of surveillance and intimidation of Tibetans in Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada.93 The same top-shelf spyware used against Uighurs has also been used in campaigns against Tibetans.94 As Chinese government efforts to suppress the culture and language of Mongolians in Inner Mongolia accelerated in 2020, provoking widespread protests, threats also spread to members of the ethnic group living outside China. In September 2020, a man from Inner Mongolia living in Australia on a temporary visa reported that that he had received a call from local authorities in China warning him that if he spoke out about events in the region, including on social media, then he would “be withdrawn from Australia.”95 Practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China, also face regular reprisals from China and from Chinese agents. These include frequent harassment and occasional physical assaults by members of visiting Chinese delegations or pro-Beijing proxies at protests overseas, as in cases that have occurred since 2014 in the United States,96 the Czech Republic,97 Taiwan,98 Brazil,99 and Argentina.100 Media and cultural initiatives associated with Falun Gong have reported suspicious break-ins targeting sensitive information, vehicle tampering, and pressure from Chinese authorities for local businesses to cut off advertising or other contractual obligations with them.101 Multiple Falun Gong practitioners in Thailand have also faced detention, including a Taiwanese man involved in uncensored radio broadcasts to China102 and several cases of Chinese refugees formally recognized as such by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).103 In October 2017, a Falun Gong practitioner who had survived a Chinese labor camp and become a high-profile informant on CCP abuses—sneaking a letter into a Halloween decoration when detained and later filming a documentary with undercover footage—died of sudden kidney failure in Indonesia. Some colleagues consider his death suspicious, but no autopsy was performed.104 Human rights defenders, journalists, and others who criticize the CCP have come under target as well. Independent Chinese media in Australia have had advertisers and even local town councils withdraw from sponsorships under Chinese diplomatic pressure, while suffering more overt actions like the theft of newspapers.105 Chinese journalists106, political cartoonists,107 activists, and the teenage son of a detained rights lawyer who have fled China have been threatened or detained in neighboring countries like Thailand108 and Myanmar,109 and in some cases, forcibly returned to the mainland. In July 2020, a Chinese student in Australia who runs a Twitter account critical of Xi Jinping said she had received video calls in which a Chinese police officer, speaking next to her father, warned her “to remember that you are a citizen of China.”110 In recent years, Hong Kong democracy advocates have emerged as a relatively new target of transnational repression. In October 2016, prominent Hong Kong political activist Joshua Wong was detained on arrival and deported from Thailand.111 After large-scale prodemocracy protests broke out in Hong Kong in 2019, advocates traveling to Taiwan were followed, harassed, and attacked with red paint by pro-CCP groups,112 prompting police protection to be assigned to them.113 A Singaporean activist was jailed for 10 days in August 2020 for “illegal assembly” because of a Skype call he convened with Joshua Wong in 2016 during a discussion event in Singapore.114 With Beijing’s imposition of a National Security Law on Hong Kong in June 2020, the net around Hong Kongers globally tightened. The law includes a provision with vast extraterritorial reach, potentially criminalizing any speech critical of the freedomhouse.org 19