Sec. 2. Findings

462 words·~2 min read·/bill/118/hr/5907/ih/section-2

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Congress finds the following: Transnational repression is not currently codified or defined in United States law. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines transnational repression as foreign government breach of national borders through physical and digital means to intimidate, silence, coerce, harass, or harm members of diaspora and exile communities in violation of United States law. Transnational repression is often used to silence individuals who are perceived to oppose or are critical of a government, including journalists, writers and artists, human rights defenders, religious or ethnic minority groups, and political opponents.

Methods of transnational repression may include physical and digital stalking, harassment, computer hacking, phone tapping, INTERPOL abuse, criminal threats, assaults, attempted kidnappings, coerced repatriation, and detaining family members in the home country. Transnational repression is not limited to physical acts of intimidation and harassment. According to Citizen Lab, digital transnational repression tools are used to facilitate government reach beyond borders to gain access to social media and email accounts, including through phishing attacks, zero-click spyware hacks, social media page takedowns, SIM card hacks, and fake invitations to conferences.

For human rights activists and dissidents, this has a serious impact on their advocacy work and sense of security, even if they have relocated to escape physical intimidation. On February 23, 2022, the National Security Division of the Department of Justice launched a Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats in order to support a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to addressing threats the United States faces from hostile nations, including transnational repression.

Throughout 2022, the Department of Justice charged a number of individuals with stalking, harassing, and illicitly acting as agents of foreign governments, who allegedly perpetrated transnational repression to silence United States residents who were critics of the People’s Republic of China. In January 2023, the Department of Justice announced charges and arrests in a case involving an assassination plot directed from Iran against a critic of the regime. The Department stated, These charges are just the latest example of individuals in Iran directing deadly violence on U.S. soil. .

Transnational repression is a growing problem. The Department of Justice has reported an alarming rise in plots emanating from Iran, China, Russia, and elsewhere, targeting people in the United States . As of April 2023, Freedom House has documented 854 direct, physical cases of transnational repression that took place globally between 2014 and 2022. Freedom House recorded a total of 79 new incidents of transnational repression globally committed by 20 governments in 2022. Two governments, Bangladesh and Djibouti, were added to the list of perpetrators, bringing the total number of states engaged in transnational repression around the world to 38.

The number of countries where acts of transnational repression took place rose from 84 to 91 in 2022, including the United States, according to Freedom House.