A reading of texts by the detained journalist Deniz Yücel, held at the Festsaal Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany, 15 March 2017. Gregor Fischer/Press Association. All rights reserved.For dissidents and rights defenders around the world, the ability to
seek refuge abroad has always been a crucial lifeline. Autocratic and
authoritarian regimes in particular give rise to expat communities abroad, as
those willing to speak out at home are often forced into exile.
Increasingly, though, persecution has not stopped at the border: today’s
autocrats are displaying a growing audacity in their willingness to pursuing
dissenters everywhere, using varied methods, and blatantly disregarding
national boundaries in the process. As the tentacles of oppression slither
deeper into what should be safe havens, it’s high time the West recognizes its
moral obligation to fight back.
China takes a particularly aggressive approach, reaching far beyond its
own borders to pursue activists the government sees as threats. Beijing follows
a tried and tested playbook to go after its critics abroad: deploy Chinese
citizens as well as Chinese-born foreign citizens to infiltrate dissident expat
communities, with the aim of forcing dissidents to return to China. Examples of
this modus operandi can be found in places as far apart as Sweden and Canada. In the latter case,
Chinese agents have doubled their efforts to force expats to return after
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau displayed his unwillingness to heed Beijing’s demands and
conclude a repatriation treaty. These tactics offer the added benefit of
avoiding lengthy legal battles involving dissidents’ host countries on whether
or not to deport those who have sought refuge.
While such cloak-and-dagger antics have come to be synonymous with the
regime in Beijing, other countries now duplicate China’s approach in
suppressing dissidents and activists abroad. Following the attempted Turkish
coup in July 2016, a purge targeting
more than 50,000 public servants, military personnel, and journalists has been
under way. Most are suspected of having connections to Fetullah Gulen, an
exiled cleric living in Pennsylvania who Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan
blames for the failed attempt.
Tensions between Berlin and Ankara have been mounting since the
troubling arrest of journalist Deniz Yücel. A
correspondent for German daily Die Welt, who has dual Turkish
and German citizenship, Yücel is the first German journalist to be arrested in
the context of the purge, proving that holding a foreign passport doesn’t help
protect those who criticize autocratic regimes. Yücel came under fire from the
Turkish government after coverage of the rebel Kurdistan Worker’s Party, as
well as reporting on hacking attempts carried out against Erdogan’s son-in-law
Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister. Yücel was initially accused of having
ties to hackers involved in releasing files stolen from Albayrak to Wikileaks.
The affair didn’t end there. German authorities recently raided the
homes of Turkish-trained imams suspected of spying on critics of Erdogan’s increasingly
illiberal regime and constitutional reform plans, uncovering a vast network of
clerical spies in the process. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Much like the former East German Stasi, Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency
(MIT) is known to be conducting “enormous” undercover operations across the
Federal Republic in an attempt to put pressure on German Turks, using 800 officers and a staggering 6000
informants – one informant for every 500 citizens of Turkish origin.
Infiltrating foreign communities thus presents western states with a
palpable threat, not least because this extra-legal approach undermines the
sovereignty of the host state. Thus far, though, a concerted pushback against
this subversion has been lacking. Following several high-profile extraditions of Chinese dissidents living in
Thailand, western governments simply wagged their finger at China’s
cross-border activities. In turn, Beijing has come to interpret the
west’s apathy as an indication that the cross-border pursuit of Chinese-born
dissidents is tacitly accepted and consequently justified.
While China and Turkey do their best circumvent democratic judicial
systems, others actively engage the courts of the western countries to which
dissidents have fled in order to lock them into protracted legal battles and
pervert the legal institutions meant to protect them. Just look no further than
Djibouti’s authoritarian leader Ismail Omar Guelleh, for example, who used the
British courts to attack Abdourahman Boreh, a political
opponent, by accusing him of supporting terrorism and accepting bribes for the
construction of a port. Fearing Boreh could turn into a leader of the exiled
opposition, Guelleh initiated court procedures on “capricious” charges finally thrown out once
judges were able to get to the heart of the matter. Despite Guelleh’s attempt
to sabotage the system with its own weapons, the final ruling cleared Boreh of all charges—three years and
millions of pounds later. Guelleh suffered yet another legal setback in London
last month: after alleging Dubai’s DP World bribed Boreh to win a concession in
Djibouti, his government lost an arbitration case.
Sadly, successes like this may become less likely as a result of
changing political tides. Donald Trump, despite being the “leader of the free
world,” has demonstrated an unabashed admiration for strongmen like Vladimir
Putin and a tendency to resort to autocratic methods himself. His response to
criticism against his administration, for example, has been to engage in a media crackdown that would not be out of place in
China or in Erdogan’s Turkey. Though the administration’s stance toward Beijing
has been tough, Trump‘s criticism of China centres on trade and economic issues
and has very little to do with human rights.
If the actions of Trump’s White House associates are anything to go by,
the new president won’t prioritize protecting dissidents in the United States:
his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, took money to lobby for Gulen’s extradition
while working for Trump’s campaign. Beyond Washington, the international legal
foundations of justice seem to be crumbling; especially in Africa, multiple
states have announced their intention to quit the
International Criminal Court.