Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12917591

Human Rights Watch has reported cases of transnational repression for years. The governments of Saudi Arabia, China, Rwanda, and Russia, among others, have long been implicated in harassment, abductions, and killings, and, more recently, in digital abuses, through new technologies.

The Biden administration in the U.S. has helped to create a G7 Rapid Response Mechanism Working Group on transnational repression to co-ordinate government responses. The UK has created a Defending Democracy Taskforce that seeks to combat foreign interference, including such threats. In the European Union, both the Foreign Affairs Council and the European Parliament listed addressing transnational repression as a priority in 2023.

But governments also need to scrutinise the part that they are playing, to make sure that they are not contributing — even inadvertently — to the very acts that they seek to curtail, Human Rights Watch says