Transnational Repression: An Overview
This report follows on from a series of reports entitled “Transnational Repression: A Multi-Domain, Grey Zone Activity”. The series examines transnational repression (TNR) from multiple angles and showcases a model of transnational repression that views it as a multi-domain activity, namely an activity that draws on activities across several environments (the perpetrating state’s domestic setting, the international system, the digital domain, and the target/host state’s domestic arena. The series highlights the core actors and activities associated with TNR and is supplemented by this report and a further report that examines Iranian TNR in the West.
Transnational repression, namely any actions by states or non-state groups to prevent, curtail, or deter real or perceived dissent among their nationals, compatriots, or critics abroad by targeting members of their diaspora or third-party citizens, is a practice of growing significance in the West and the world more generally (Tsourapas, 2021). Though TNR is by no means a new phenomenon, the emergence of information technologies and the rise of globalisation have entailed “the quantitative increase and qualitative transformation” of TNR practices (Furstenberg, Lemon, and Heathershaw, 2021: 359). TNR activities range across a spectrum but include: proxy punishment, digital harassment, doxing, threats, surveillance, hacking, physical attacks, abduction, and assassination, among others.
This report highlights TNR risk and associated factors identified by the CREST model of TNR. The model argues that TNR is achieved, executed, and facilitated by the interplay of perpetrators’ behaviour in and between several domains, namely the perpetrators’ domestic environment, the international arena, the domestic environment of the host or target state, and the digital domain.
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