AFP :
The murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey, the US detention of a Russian asylum applicant and the abduction of a China-born Swedish citizen from Thailand all have one thing in common.
All three represent a sharp increase in countries methodically extending political repression beyond their borders with little repercussion, according to a report released by the US-based Freedom House on Thursday.
Dozens of countries are using multiple tools of international law, bilateral pressures, digital media monitoring and harassment and physical threats to pursue exiled dissidents and activists, said the rights group.
Freedom House — a mostly US government-funded democracy advocacy group — documents 608 cases of direct and physical “transnational repression” by 31 countries since 2014.
“In each incident, the origin country’s authorities physically reached an individual living abroad, whether through detention, assault, physical intimidation, unlawful deportation, rendition, or suspected assassination,” it said.Assassinations — like that of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018 by agents of the Saudi royal family — and other violent attacks garner the most attention.
But other methods of repression are more common and equally pernicious, the report notes.
The murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey, the US detention of a Russian asylum applicant and the abduction of a China-born Swedish citizen from Thailand all have one thing in common.
All three represent a sharp increase in countries methodically extending political repression beyond their borders with little repercussion, according to a report released by the US-based Freedom House on Thursday.
Dozens of countries are using multiple tools of international law, bilateral pressures, digital media monitoring and harassment and physical threats to pursue exiled dissidents and activists, said the rights group.
Freedom House — a mostly US government-funded democracy advocacy group — documents 608 cases of direct and physical “transnational repression” by 31 countries since 2014.
“In each incident, the origin country’s authorities physically reached an individual living abroad, whether through detention, assault, physical intimidation, unlawful deportation, rendition, or suspected assassination,” it said.Assassinations — like that of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018 by agents of the Saudi royal family — and other violent attacks garner the most attention.
But other methods of repression are more common and equally pernicious, the report notes.
