DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression Burundian intelligence services to detain Burundian asylum seekers living in refugee camps.47 At least eight individuals who were returned to Burundi in this way have been accused of antistate activity and subsequently put on trial.48 The Burundian government’s campaign of transnational repression and Tanzania’s harsh migration policies create grey areas where the two states can cooperate to silence dissent.49 When autocrats cannot manipulate courts and migration agencies, or are unable to find like-minded members of local security services, they resort to direct attacks that violate the sovereignty of host countries. These attacks are easier to carry out when the host government is not alert to the danger. For example, an activist and blogger from Azerbaijan, Mahammad Mirzali, was stabbed in France in March 2021.50 He had received numerous threats stemming from his criticism of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and had even been shot at. Yet local police in Nantes took half an hour to respond to a call from the activist reporting that he was being followed. After the attack, Mirzali’s supporters said police were reluctant to examine the political motivation of the assailants. French authorities’ lack of awareness about the threat of transnational repression put Mirzali’s life at greater risk. Host governments will be hard-pressed to counter a threat that has turned their own institutions and practices against the vulnerable people they shelter. Policy options for host states Outrageous attacks on dissidents—including Saudi authorities’ murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Russian security services’ use of a nerve agent against a former spy in the United Kingdom, and Beijing’s relentless campaign against Uyghurs—are beginning to spur democratic policymakers into action. However, host governments will be hard-pressed to counter a threat that has turned their own institutions and practices against the vulnerable people they shelter. They must overcome a lack of awareness, gaps in legal protections, and competing policy considerations to provide stronger safeguards against extraterritorial violence. 12 @FreedomHouse Freedom House identified security, migration, and foreign policies in nine countries for analysis using evidence from its database of 735 incidents of direct, physical transnational repression between 2014 and 2021. A full analysis of these countries’ policy responses can be found in the individual country studies that accompany this global report. The comparative overview of policies provided below highlights what host governments are doing now and why it matters. SECURITY POLICY Redefining national security Governments that recognize threats to human rights and democracy as a matter of national security are better prepared to address transnational repression. Traditional national security frameworks focus on threats posed by foreign states to territorial integrity, core institutions and infrastructure, and the population at large. They do not adequately capture or offer responses to the harms that foreign states can inflict on specifically targeted residents, or the effects of such aggression on the host country’s democracy. Some countries have begun to consider ways to better incorporate individual human security into national security. Canada and Sweden, for example, recognize that particular diaspora communities may be more at risk of extraterritorial violence, and that this could have broader consequences for their societies. The Canadian government has acknowledged that Beijing and Moscow engage in hostile actions that threaten members of certain ethnocultural communities for the purpose of silencing dissent.51 Sweden’s government has noted that this type of targeting by foreign states affects the exercise of guaranteed rights and freedoms.52 Accounting for transnational repression requires widening the lens of national security to include threats that apply to individuals because of their identity or political activity directed at governments abroad, and understanding that these threats affect the individuals’ ability to exercise rights that should be available to everyone. While criminal laws provide basic prohibitions against physical attacks, few states have recognized that information collection on individuals is often a precursor to assaults and assassinations or pressure on family members in the origin country. Similarly, espionage laws typically cover the #TransnationalRepression