A parliamentary report identified China and other authoritarian regimes as harassing and attacking dissidents abroad, echoing findings from ICIJ’s China Targets.chin
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution urging member states to confront efforts by authoritarian regimes to coerce, control or silence political opponents and dissidents living in Europe.
“Human rights defenders are a key pillar of democracy and the rule of law, and they are insufficiently protected,” a statement from the parliament said.
The resolution, adopted with a majority of 512 votes (to 76 against and 52 abstentions), called for targeted sanctions against perpetrators, market surveillance of spyware and better coordination among European authorities to counter what lawmakers labeled “transnational repression.”
“For the first time, the European Union will call this phenomenon by its name,” rapporteur Chloe told reporters ahead of the Nov. 13 vote.
“Naming it means … refusing that here in Europe, within our borders, authoritarian regimes can chase and harass their opponents with complete impunity to make them silent,” Ridel said.
She added that there are no European or national policies to tackle transnational repression and the proposal was key to protecting the EU’s sovereignty.
The resolution is not legally binding but signals that European lawmakers want to take a clear position on the issue and draw attention to it, Elodie Laborie, a spokesperson for the Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in an email.
The parliamentary report identifies China, Egypt and Russia among 10 countries whose governments are responsible for nearly 80% of known cases, which include targeted killings, abductions, harassment and the misuse of international policing tools such as Interpol’s red notice system.
It confirms findings by ICIJ’s China Targets investigation, which revealed how Beijing continues to use surveillance, hacking and threats against Chinese and Hong Kong dissidents, Uyghur and Tibetan advocates and their families to quash any criticism of the regime abroad.
The investigation, led by ICIJ in collaboration with 42 media partners, was based on internal Chinese government documents spanning two decades, as well as interviews with 105 targets, including 44 living in France, Ireland and other European countries.
Most of the targets interviewed by ICIJ and its partners said they had not reported state-sponsored threats to the authorities in their adopted countries, either out of fear of retaliation from China or because they didn’t have faith in local police forces’ ability to help.
Among the few who did file complaints — including Nurya Zyden, a Uyghur rights advocate in Dublin, who said she was followed by two Chinese men to an activist gathering in Sarajevo, Bosnia, last year — most said police did not pursue their cases or told them that there was no evidence of a crime.
China Targets also documented how Chinese authorities abuse Interpol, the world’s largest mechanism for police cooperation, to pursue dissidents, powerful businesspeople and Uyghur rights advocates, in apparent violation of Interpol’s rules. Many targets discovered they were wanted only after being stopped at a border control.
To examine EU authorities’ response to state-sponsored threats, ICIJ and its European media partners surveyed 10 member states and found that their response to Beijing’s attacks against overseas dissidents was ineffective and lacked coordination.
“So far, we have let it happen,” Ridel said in the statement. “It is time to put an end to it. Europe must remain a safe haven for those fighting for freedom and democracy.”
