Last year was a particularly dangerous time to be a Belarusian political dissident—not just in Belarus, but anywhere in the world. In 2021, after months of violently cracking down on peaceful opposition protests at home, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko began exporting his repressive tactics abroad. His targets ranged widely, from longtime dissidents to novice critics. Although many of his efforts flew under the international radar, others attracted major public attention. In May 2021, for instance, Lukashenko’s regime concocted a false bomb threat to force a passenger airliner traveling between Greece and Lithuania to land in Minsk so that Roman Pratasevich, a young journalist and political activist on board, could be arrested on the tarmac. Later, during the Tokyo Olympics, Belarusian authorities tried to forcibly repatriate Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a track and field athlete, after she criticized the national team’s coaching staff—and were only prevented from doing so by the Japanese police.
Both incidents are cases of what is known as transnational repression, or the efforts of governments to reach across borders to silence their critics. In a new report from Freedom House, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization, we find that safe spaces for dissent are rapidly shrinking around the world. Based on a data set of 735 documented incidents of explicit transnational repression that occurred between 2014 and 2021, we show that authoritarian governments are increasingly working together to help locate, threaten, detain, and expel their critics. Moreover, thanks to the restrictive asylum policies of many democracies that could otherwise serve as havens for dissidents, there are fewer safe places available for those seeking shelter from persecution. If democracies want to shore up liberal values and human rights worldwide, they could start by welcoming those who are risking their lives to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
