Opinion | Repression Without Borders - The New York Times

Smiting foes wherever they may be has a firm place in mythology, literature and history. The meddling Greek gods. James Bond’s license to kill. Joseph Stalin’s hit man who finally caught up with Leon Trotsky in Mexico City. Given this legacy, it is fair to ask why human rights organizations are now raising an alarm about authoritarian leaders who hunt down dissidents far from their borders. The reason is that the scope, scale and impunity of transnational repression by a new breed of strongmen — intimidating, detaining, assaulting, kidnapping, deporting or assassinating exiled critics — have grown exponentially with globalization, digital connectedness and new methods of surveillance. Some of the more flagrant examples are well known: the murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul and Russia’s use of lethal toxins to murder one former spy, Alexander Litvinenko, and attempt to murder another, Sergei Skripal. Neither Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia nor President Vladimir Putin of Russia made any effort to justify or rationalize the hits; they simply denied personal responsibility. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by contrast, has openly cast a broad global net for his foes since a coup attempt in July 2016, using both legal and illegal means. According to a major report this year by the human rights organization Freedom House, the dragnet has included at least 58 abductions...

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