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Collaboration and Resistance: Tracking Transnational Repression in 2025 [1]

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Date: 2026-04 

Last year, governments all over the world assassinated, assaulted, kidnapped, threatened, and harassed critics beyond their borders. Freedom House recorded 126 new incidents of physical, direct transnational repression during the year, bringing the total number of cases in our database, which spans 2014 to 2025, to 1,375.

Autocrats collaborating in Southeast Asia and in East Africa were responsible for the majority of incidents recorded during the year. Thailand cooperated with both Chinese and Vietnamese authorities to detain and return members of minority groups. The deportation of 40 Uyghur men to China in February cemented China’s status as the world’s leading perpetrator of transnational repression. In East Africa, Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian authorities helped each other track, detain, and return activists in an effort to impede civic mobilization ahead of and during elections.

The group of perpetrator governments expanded. Six new states—Afghanistan, Benin, Georgia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe—were identified as using tactics of transnational repression. As of 2025, at least 54 governments, or over a quarter of all countries in the world, have tried to silence dissidents abroad.

With 49 incidents, detention was the most ubiquitous tactic of transnational repression documented last year. It was followed closely, with 48 incidents, by unlawful deportation. In at least 11 cases of detention or unlawful deportation, perpetrator governments were able to use Interpol notices against exiled dissidents, suggesting that the organization’s reforms have not yet addressed avenues for abuse available to member governments.

Although incidents of transnational repression continue to happen, awareness of this threat has grown substantially among democratic governments and at multilateral forums. Many governments have increased public outreach to vulnerable communities and directed their security agencies to provide warnings and protective measures. Still, not all exiled dissidents have found effective protection after relocating abroad, and governments continue to enable transnational repression through flaws in their migration systems, returning exiled activists and dissidents to their home countries in spite of the danger.



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[1] Url: https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2026/collaboration-and-resistance-tracking-transnational-repression-2025

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