DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression 2011 who were at risk of extraterritorial violence.10 The warnings read, “Although the Metropolitan Police Service will take what steps it can to minimize the risk, the police cannot protect you from this threat on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis.” More recently, Pakistani exiles living in the UK have received threat to life warnings.11 Fazal Khan, who received such a warning in April 2021, said the police gave him an emergency phone number to contact if he was concerned about his safety, and said they would respond to his call with protection.12 The Metropolitan Police issued threat to life warnings to at least two Rwandans, René Mugenzi and Jonathan Musonera, in 2011 who were at risk of extraterritorial violence. UK authorities recently took legal action in response to a British man’s involvement in a planned transnational attack. In January 2022, a London court found Muhammad Gohir Khan guilty of conspiring to kill Waqass Goraya, a Pakistani dissident blogger living in the Netherlands. Khan had traveled from the UK to Amsterdam the previous February but was apparently unable to complete the murder for which he had been hired. Goraya, for his part, has been in hiding since Dutch police warned him the same month about a threat to his life. The case underscores the importance of government awareness and cooperating with partner governments in response to the threat of transnational repression. In another example of proactive law enforcement activity, in 2015 the Metropolitan Police investigated allegations that the Eritrean embassy was harassing Eritreans to pay the “diaspora tax,” a fee levied by the regime on all members of the Eritrean diaspora.13 As part of their investigation, police officers reached out to members of the Eritrean community to learn more about the tactics used and to consider whether the pressure constituted a criminal offense; according to a spokesperson from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “use of harassment and blackmail could be [illegal].” Foreign policy and accountability Efforts to hold perpetrator states accountable for transnational repression are inconsistent and appear to be related to other foreign policy considerations. The UK responded to the Skripal attack by declaring 23 Russian diplomats personae non gratae, freezing certain state assets that “may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents,” and taking other symbolic diplomatic measures. The EU applied targeted sanctions in the form of travel bans and asset freezes on two Russian intelligence officials believed to be involved in the attempted murder. Several allied governments joined the UK in expelling Russian diplomats following the attack. Two years later, in 2020, the UK adopted the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, modeled on the United States’ Magnitsky sanctions. The mechanism allows targeted sanctions on human rights violators. They have been applied to 20 Saudi officials implicated in the 2018 assassination of Khashoggi in Istanbul.14 Using separate authorities, the UK joined allied governments in applying targeted sanctions in response to Belarus’s arrest of Pratesevich.15 UK officials have raised issues of transnational repression in bilateral relationships. From 2011 to 2015, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office raised the issue of the diaspora tax with Eritrean counterparts at least four times.16 In 2011, the UK Security Service confronted the Rwandan high commissioner to Britain, urging him to end the campaign of harassment against Rwandan dissidents in the UK. The Security Service said that the UK might cut its aid to Rwanda if the intimidation continued.17 However, both the harassment of Rwandans living in the UK and the partnership between the UK and Rwandan governments have continued since then.18 Rwandan exile and UK resident Faustin Rukundo was subject to coercion by proxy in 2017, when his wife traveled to Rwanda for a funeral and was arrested, and to a spyware infection in 2019.19 In early 2022, the UK approved Johnston Busingye as the new Rwandan ambassador to the country despite his record of involvement in transnational repression.20 Busingye, who had served as Rwanda’s justice minister and attorney general since 2013, had admitted in a 2021 media interview that the Rwandan government had paid for the private flight from Dubai to Rwanda that was used in the rendition of dissident Paul Rusesabagina.21 Similar conflicts are present in UK-Bahraini relations. The two countries have close relations and the UK government has helped train Bahraini security officials as recently as 2018.22 Concerns about Bahraini extraterritorial targeting of UK 4 @FreedomHouse #TransnationalRepression