Frequently asked questions

Transnational Repression, or TNR, refers to acts or threats against individuals, groups and communities across territorial borders carried out by governments or their proxies, which violate human rights and/or intimidate, control, coerce, or silence dissent.

For more information about what TNR is, click here

There is not a single way TNR can be deployed in the UK. In fact, there is a diverse and ever-growing set of tactics used by a perpetrating states when seeking to access and intimidate their target.

The Joint Committee for Human Rights 2025 parliamentary report identified a number of these tactics. Below is a non-exhaustive list of these conducts, what they mean, who they affect, and landmark examples:

• Surveillance: Surveillance can take place both online and offline. Most commonly, targets are victims of surveillance through digital devices and spyware.
• Online and in-person harassment: Harassment can take place by way of social media platforms, email, text messages and phone-calls. This can also take place in-person, people can be victim to verbal threats, slurs and insults, and physically assaulted, harmed and attacked.
• Gendered and sexualised forms of harassment and acts or threats of violence: In the digital age, research has highlighted that exposure to unlawful surveillance, hacking and doxxing, deep-faking using AI, sexual harassment and assault, online harassment, and smear campaigns disproportionately target women human rights defenders.
• Coercion-by-Proxy: Rather than targeting a particular dissenter abroad, perpetrating states may choose to threaten or punish their family members, personal networks, friends, acquaintances and colleagues back home.
• ‘Bounties’ placed on nationals abroad: A financial incentive imposed upon dissenters by perpetrating governments for specific actions of gaining information, capture leading to extradition/arrest and killing in extreme cases.
• Misuse of INTERPOL Red Notices: An INTERPOL Red Notice is a request issued to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest an individual who is wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence. Yet, despite INTERPOL constitutionally prohibiting the issuance of red notices on political grounds, they are routinely misused to target dissenters, political opponents, journalists and human rights defenders.
• False Extradition: A legalistic method of TNR where perpetrating states abuse international legal mechanisms (e.g. INTERPOL) to force the return of dissidents. By using fabricated criminal charges such as terrorism, extremism, treason or financial crimes, host-states are sometimes tricked into detaining and repatriating individuals.
• False or Politically-motivated Imprisonment: The unlawful, intentional and non-consensual imprisonment without or with improper legal authority. It is heavily argued that the case of British citizen and Pro-Democracy Hong Kong campaigner Jimmy Lai, demonstrates false imprisonment, as he serves a 20-year sentence under charges of fraud at 78 years old
• Forced Disappearances: In cases of high-profile dissidents, perpetrating states by way of state agents or officials, may arrest, abduct and imprison targets. This is often followed by the perpetrating states refusal to conceal the victim’s fate or location and acknowledgement of the deprivation of their liberty. This is an ongoing human rights violation which places victims outside the protection of the law and often leads to torture, death, and trauma for their families. A prominent example, though not UK based, is the enforced disappearance of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, author on Chinese politics and political figures, representing 1 of 5 Hong Kong writers and book sellers who disappeared in 2015. He reappeared in Chinese state media in 2017 and was formally sentenced on bogus espionage charges in 2020. He remains imprisoned in an unconfirmed location and has been denied access to his family.
• Assassination/ Lethal Retribution: In extreme cases of TNR, victims have been attempted to be or have been assassinated. A definitive example within a UK context is the 2018 attempted assassination via a chemical nerve agent of Russian nationals Sergei and Yulia Skirpal in Salisbury, after being convicted of treason in Russia.
• Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPS): a form of TNR to weaponise the legal system, either in the home country or where the target is based, through the abusive use of civil and criminal charges. This can occur when regime-connected individuals or companies bring legal actions for the purpose of silencing government critics, aimed at harrassing, intimidating and financially and psychologically exhausting targets by using defamation and other types of legal claims

To see concrete examples of how these conducts have affected victims of TNR in the UK, please see here

Transnational Repression is a direct infringement on human rights and freedoms throughout the UK, while also representing a real and pressing security threat to individuals, communities and institutions across the country. Without robust and meaningful statutory protections, a clear and expansive definition, as well as a method by which government departments can coordinate and respond effectively, the UK cannot protect those inside the UK and ensure its own territory, systems and institutions are hardened against such abuse.

If the UK does not act, it fails its obligations to International Human Rights law and standards, while also falling short of domestic standards, such as those outlined in the Human Rights Act. Due to responses by bodies such as the G7, as well as ongoing work at institutions such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations, the UK risks falling behind and failing to live up to its international commitments if it does not act.

The UK has long held itself up as a country that will protect those targeted for their protected acts – whether as a journalist, academic or campaigner, as well as marginalised communities – so they can find refuge and support. However, any failure to respond to the threats that follow those who call the UK home will send a signal to others that they must be silent and step back from their important work to ensure they do not face threats. This would exert a significant chilling effect across all parts of British society and significantly hollow out the UK’s civic space.

No. The UK Government has not adopted a formal definition of transnational repression. In its response to the JCHR Inquiry report, it described TNR as a term that describes “certain foreign state-directed crimes against individuals.” This is a narrow description that is only satisfied by threats or acts that cross a criminal threshold. This would mean that many tactics and examples documented by the Working Group of TNR would not meet this threshold. It is also far narrower than definitions established by the G7 (of which the UK is a member) and the UN OHCHR.

Further to this, the UK government has stated that TNR is ‘specific and targeted’ and ‘does not affect large numbers of people across the UK’, yet this ignores the broader societal impact of TNR and the climate of fear and the chilling effect it can have on wider groups and communities.

Training and guidance on TNR have recently been made available to police forces, but it is only mandatory for counter terrorism police in the UK. This training is limited to the 2023 National Security Act and there is no public access to the content of said training. To date, TNR victims who have engaged with the UK law enforcement have received inconsistent responses.

The UK Government currently advises direct contact with law enforcement through 999, or 101 for less urgent cases. These are not dedicated helplines for TNR alone. As of April 2026, there is no dedicated helpline for TNR. However, the UK Government has published this guidance on their website to offer support to those targeted.

If you are being targeted by TNR, you can contact your constituency MP, who may be able to offer support through their office or engage with other relevant public institutions. You can find your MP here.

TNR affects a diverse range of people. Commonly, we see TNR being used against those who have been effective in challenging the perpetrator’s actions, opposing its narrative around specific events or supporting those targeted by the state. This has included journalists, campaigners, opposition politicians, artists, academics and prominent members of marginalised communities, diaspora and exile communities. However, TNR tactics can be deployed as widely as the perpetrator country chooses.

What appear to be isolated incidents of transnational repression, in fact form part of a constant threat that is affecting millions of lives across the world. Not only is this fundamentally changing the ways in which activists, journalists and regular individuals go about their lives, it encourages others, including those who are not directly targeted to remain silent. The Joint Committee on Human Rights 2025 parliamentary report has described this as the “Chilling Effect” of transnational repression. Research has demonstrated that the chilling effect is specifically prevalent across specific communities, diaspora populations and even throughout professional organisations.

For instance, this chilling effect has been shown to impact student and international student populations across the world. In-depth interviews conducted by Amnesty International with students who studied at universities across Western Europe and North America between 2018 and 2023 revealed that many Chinese international students, the decision to exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly while abroad is fraught with the fear of drawing repercussions from the authorities in China. It is noted that this fear has a profound chilling effect on student participation in academic life and work. The fear of being reported to Chinese or Hong Kong authorities also curbs students’ willingness to address certain issues in social settings and online, to be active in or attend public events, or to participate in student life on campus.

TNR targets’ families in their home-state are also at risk of being weaponised by TNR tactics that use them to pressure relatives in other countries to avoid speaking out on certain topics.

In the UK, transnational repression has also shown to be used against members of British parliament as members of the House of Commons and House of Lords have been sanctioned by perpetrating states.

No. Whilst many authoritarian states conduct transnational repression beyond their borders, the global erosion of democratic standards and the rule of law has enabled other repressive states, as well as democratic countries to deploy TNR against its critics. For example, it has been documented that India, often called the world’s largest democracy, has undertaken a campaign of TNR, specifically targeting Sikh communities in the UK, as evidenced by the Sikh Press Association in 2025 in their evidence provided to the UK Parliament.

TNR is a tactic that can be utilised by any government seeking to target dissent or critical speech. It can also be facilitated by democratic states who may not perpetuate TNR directly but make decisions that can embolden or encourage others. This includes the provision of commercially sourced surveillance technologies, preventing TNR targets to secure visas or other methods by which they can live and work securely in exile, or by relying on INTERPOL Red Notices deployed to extradite targeted individuals.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights report on TNR named Bahrain, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE as the top perpetrators of TNR within the UK.

Due to the threats facing TNR targets, many will not come forward and speak out about their experiences. As a result, we may never get a full or accurate picture as to the experiences of targets and the states perpetrating TNR in the UK.

According to Freedom House, between 2014 and 2024 “a quarter of the world’s governments (48 states) are using tactics of transnational repression, but 10 are responsible for nearly 80 percent of all physical, direct incidents”.