Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Please join the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for a hearing on trends in transnational repression and potential policy approaches to addressing this problem.
Transnational repression is receiving growing interest from policymakers and attention from researchers who monitor its expansion. The Department of Justice defines transnational repression (TNR) as a “range of tactics that foreign governments employ to reach beyond their borders to harm, intimidate, threaten, harass, or coerce individuals. Targeted victims of transnational repression often include political dissidents and activists, journalists, political opponents, religious and ethnic minority groups, and members of diaspora and exile communities.”
Transnational repression constitutes human rights violations that cross borders. It can be direct, through killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, and unlawful removals, or indirect, through tactics such as online harassment, digital surveillance, targeting of relatives, and the abuse of consular services. Thus, TNR can implicate human rights abuses by creating a chilling effect on individuals’ abilities to exercise their rights of freedom of expression and association. TNR can be done by government officials but also by non-state actors like political parties and proxies located in other countries.
This hearing will examine new developments and trends since the Commission’s last hearing on TNR in February 2024, including the use of financial institutions to try to silence criticism and dissent. The hearing will assess multilateral efforts to develop common definitions and coordinate responses, and how other governments are crafting institutional approaches to addressing TNR. It will also look at particular country cases, such as Pakistan, India, Hong Kong and China.
For more information please visit: humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/transnational-repression-trends-and-policy-approaches-0
Please join the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for a hearing on trends in transnational repression and potential policy approaches to addressing this problem.
Transnational repression is receiving growing interest from policymakers and attention from researchers who monitor its expansion. The Department of Justice defines transnational repression (TNR) as a “range of tactics that foreign governments employ to reach beyond their borders to harm, intimidate, threaten, harass, or coerce individuals. Targeted victims of transnational repression often include political dissidents and activists, journalists, political opponents, religious and ethnic minority groups, and members of diaspora and exile communities.”
Transnational repression constitutes human rights violations that cross borders. It can be direct, through killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, and unlawful removals, or indirect, through tactics such as online harassment, digital surveillance, targeting of relatives, and the abuse of consular services. Thus, TNR can implicate human rights abuses by creating a chilling effect on individuals’ abilities to exercise their rights of freedom of expression and association. TNR can be done by government officials but also by non-state actors like political parties and proxies located in other countries.
This hearing will examine new developments and trends since the Commission’s last hearing on TNR in February 2024, including the use of financial institutions to try to silence criticism and dissent. The hearing will assess multilateral efforts to develop common definitions and coordinate responses, and how other governments are crafting institutional approaches to addressing TNR. It will also look at particular country cases, such as Pakistan, India, Hong Kong and China.
For more information please visit: humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/transnational-repression-trends-and-policy-approaches-0
