At a congressional hearing co-chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), victims of “transnational repression” shared personal accounts of harassment, threats and intimidation by foreign governments attempting to silence criticism by members of their exile or diaspora communities living here in the United States.

            “I’d like to be able to say that these stories of transnational repression are rare—that it is unusual or uncommon for foreign governments to harm, intimidate, silence, abduct, or spy on members of diaspora and exile communities in the US and other countries,” said Smith, who chaired two additional hearings highlighting the issue over the past year.

            “But it’s not rare,” said Smith, who authored the Transnational Repression Policy Act (HR 3654) since “the Biden Administration’s response to this transnational repression has been very weak.”

            As Chairman of the House Global Human Rights panel, Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), Smith meets regularly with people who are targeted and persecuted by foreign governments that go after them inside the United States.

            Among its provisions, Smith’s legislation would:

            · Require the President to impose property- and visa-blocking sanctions on foreign individuals and entities that directly engage in transnational repression;

            · Mandate the State Department to develop a strategy to fight transnational repression;

            · Direct the US intelligence community to identify the perpetrators of transnational repression; and

            · Direct the Justice Department to train law enforcement and other employees in detecting and fighting it.

            According to the human rights watchdog Freedom House, 854 direct, physical incidents of transnational repression by 38 governments in 91 countries were actually recorded from 2014 through 2022.

            Entitled “Transnational Repression and the US Response,” the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing included firsthand testimony from three victims of transnational repression living in the United States.

            Frances Hui, who shared some of her personal experiences as a target of Beijing’s transnational repression, said the Chinese Communist Party “is carrying out the world’s most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression.”

            “Last year, the Hong Kong authorities issued arrest warrants and HK$ 1 million bounties ($128,000) for the arrest of 13 overseas Hong Kongers—including myself, five of the people are living in the US,” Hui said. “Ever since that, the death threats I have received online have been unstoppable. Some of our immediate family members and even in-laws in Hong Kong have been detained for questioning and were used as a means to pass on threatening messages from the authorities to those of us living abroad.”

            “China’s extraterritorial harassment, including on American soil, has increased in recent years,” said Elfidar Iltebir, a Uyghur American who serves as President of the Uyghur American Association. “China persistently violates United States laws to target Uyghurs within the United States, subjecting them to psychological torture by threatening the safety of their relatives to silence criticism of its genocide. Uyghurs in the United States are under surveillance.”

            Abdulhamit Bilici, a journalist who was exiled from Turkey in 2016, described the Turkish government’s “extraordinary campaign of transnational repression against its critics overseas without any check.”

            “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long arm has reached tens of thousands of Turkish citizens abroad while Turkey has been experiencing a deepening human rights crisis especially since the coup attempt in 2016,” Bilici said.

            Smith, who noted some victims are also persecuted when they leave the US and return home, recalled a recent meeting he had with Emin Bayramli—a young man living in New Jersey who advocated on behalf of his father Gubad Ibadoglu. A prominent Azerbaijani economist, Ibadoglu had lived abroad for many years—including in the United States.

            “Last summer Ibadoglu returned to Azerbaijan to visit his mother—and was arrested and imprisoned on patently ridiculous charges of possessing a bag of counterfeit currency,” said Smith. “The real reason? He was researching corruption on the part of the dictator of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and firms linked to President Erdogan of Turkey—and was a leading authority on economic responses to regime corruption.”

            In November, Smith led a letter with CECC Co-Chair Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-RI) asking President Biden to demand an immediate end to transnational repression efforts targeting American citizens and legal residents ahead of his meeting with Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Franscisco.

            “We must work to protect the freedoms of speech, assembly, and opinion—both here in the US and elsewhere abroad,” Smith said.

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