Transnational repression: concrete steps we can take to combat it
New GAO report offers recommendations, exposes downside of US double standards
Earlier this month the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report[1] on how U.S. government agencies track and respond to transnational repression (or how they fail to).[2] I strongly recommend it to anyone working in this area of human rights.
(Note: a shout-out to GAO here. GAO is often thought of as bean-counting auditors who issue finely-detailed reports on obscure federal activities read by 3-4 bureaucrats. But a lot of their stuff offers clear and well-researched recommendations to policymakers which should get wider attention. It’s good stuff.)
Transnational repression (TNR) is a relatively new term to describe an age-old tactic whereby agents of a foreign government cross borders to commit human rights violations or do other nasty things to people they don’t like.[3] A prominent example (as the report cites) is the 2018 murder of U.S. permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey by Saudi agents. The term became popular as cases have risen, enabled by new technologies, as the report discusses.
The GAO report cites research by Freedom House, the NGO that has done the most and the best work on TNR. Here’s their page on it. The Washington Post also ran an article that summarized the report and provided some helpful context.
New laws needed to empower federal agencies
GAO makes four sensible recommendations to the Departments of Justice and State. They offer very narrow advice to Congress. However, the report does not address the most valuable actions Congress can take:
Pass a law to criminalize TNR domestically. There is no statute that specifically makes TNR a crime in the United States. When DOJ prosecutes individuals for TNR acts, they use other criminal statutes, as the report notes. Rep. Adam Schiff has re-introduced a bill, the Stop Transnational Repression Act, to do this (H.R. 5907 in the current 118th Congress).[4]
Pass a law to create a discrete national anti-TNR policy and toolkit. As GAO points out, agencies don’t have a clear policy framework to gather information, track cases and behavior, and impose accountability measures. The bipartisan Transnational Repression Policy Act (S. 831 by Senator Jeff Merkley and H.R. 3654 by Rep. Chris Smith) would give State, DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security the tools to do this.
Current law on TNR needs to be enforced
GAO reminds us that the U.S. government already has a tool to disincentivize countries from doing TNR. Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976 prohibits U.S. arms sales to “any country determined by the President to be engaged in a consistent pattern of acts of intimidation or harassment directed against individuals in the United States.” And yet GAO could not find any instance where this provision had been invoked to stop a weapons export, although it acknowledged that it is possible that the provision informed decision-making. This is because Section 6 only requires reporting to Congress on a positive determination, rather than when such a determination was considered.
This is a real-world concern. GAO reported that arms transfer authorizations for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt amounted to about $66 billion combined from 2017-2022. All three countries were listed as perpetrating TNR against U.S.-based persons and around the world in the TNR incident datasets it reviewed (see below).
U.S. hypocrisy and double standards undermines the effort against TNR
As mentioned, the United States has sent arms to several government who commit TNR despite a legal prohibition against such arms transfers. Here is the figure from the report indicating the countries.
Again, the lack of transparency means we don’t know whether or how section 6 was even applied. The track record tells us to be pessimistic.
Take the Khashoggi case. In 2020 then-candidate Joe Biden said his murder would cause his administration (if elected) to “reassess our relationship with the kingdom … and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.” But then he did check them. The Biden Administration has done a 100% flip, with Biden now giving warm handshakes to the Saudi official who likely ordered the hit on Khashoggi.
The Biden Administration has approved massive arms sales to the Saudis, despite the prohibition under the AECA and the clear Saudi record of committing TNR. This is a clear flaunting of the letter of the law. In reality, laws are ignored all the time unless Congress makes the effort to push the Executive Branch to enforce it, which it appears to have not in this case.
As I wrote in “India/Canada case exposes US double standard on transnational repression,” the United States operates on double standards on TNR, noting the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in a third country (Iraq) in 2020.
The Washington Post piece also cites the U.S. conducting “extraordinary renditions” or state-sponsored kidnappings against terror suspects after 9/11 as an example where the U.S. is engaging in a behavior that is seeks to erect a norm against. It quotes Freedom House president Michael Abramowitz:
[Extraordinary renditions] helped “undermine norms against extraterritorial operations, and established a precedent whereby ‘anti-terrorism’ could be used to justify all manner of human rights violations,” Abramowitz said by email. “Many of the states that engage in TNR now cite U.S. (and Israeli) extraterritorial tactics in combating terrorism as justification for their own campaigns abroad.”
Yep, this is a clear case of U.S. exemptionalism. This undermines the Unites States’ ability to craft a principles-based foreign policy and to shape an international environment based on rule of law and human rights.
If we really want to strengthen the international norm against transnational repression, in the hope it will pressure countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia from doing it so much, there is a clear game-plan:
Congress should pass the Stop Transnational Repression Act and the Transnational Repression Policy Act, clarify AECA section 6 and press the Executive Branch to adhere to it.
DOJ and State should adopt the GAO recommendations.
The U.S. government should not engage in its own acts of transnational repression, and consider coming clean on its own ugly record of past TNR (I’m especially looking at you, CIA)
[1] Full title: Agency Actions Needed to Address Harassment of Dissidents and Other Tactics of Transnational Repression in the U.S.
[2] The report was commissioned by a request from Rep. Jim McGovern and nine other House Members. All are Democrats. I don’t know if that is because Republicans weren’t invited to join the request letter, or because they declined to join the letter due to some policy or political aversion.
[3] The report provides a more extensive description of the activities and tactics that are labelled as transnational repression.
[4] All the cosponsors of Schiff’s bill are Democrats. I don’t know if there is a policy or political reason Republicans have not signed on to this bill. Several Republicans have been outspoken on TNR, including at CECC hearings on China. I would hope they would agree that TNR is bad no matter who does it, not just by the CCP.