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Transnational Repression against Journalists in Exile

January 9, 2026

Transnational repression (TNR), the cross-border targeting, intimidation, and harassment of journalists and human rights defenders, is increasingly undermining press freedom and human rights in Europe and beyond. Journalists in exile often remain subjects of sustained threats, surveillance, cyber-attacks, psychological pressure, and harassment long after reaching presumed safety. These tactics are used by authoritarian states to silence dissent, extend their reach beyond borders, and weaken the role of independent media globally. This is demonstrrated in the 18 December 2025 Position Paper written by Katrin Schatz, Journalists-in-Exile Programme Manager,

The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) stands firmly against any form of repression that endangers journalists in exile and undermines fundamental freedoms. As a Europe-focused organisation, our mandate centres on strengthening press freedom across the continent. Much of our documented experience with transnational repression comes from our support work in Germany, particularly through the Journalists in Exile (JiE) programme, which gives us direct insight into how these threats continue even after relocation. Our analysis, monitoring and advocacy consistently show that current policy frameworks are insufficiently equipped to address the reality of transnational repression.

Transnational Repression targets journalists in exile

Many Journalists in exile remain at risk. ECPMF’s research on transnational repression in Germany from 2025 finds that journalists who fled authoritarian contexts continue to experience threats, intimidation, surveillance and psychological pressure in their host countries. These tactics are part of a broader strategy by autocratising states to control dissent.

One of the most known examples is the case of Egyptian investigative journalist Basma Mostafa, whose reporting exposed torture and extrajudicial killings. { see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/11/30/human-rights-defenders-story-basma-mostafa-from-egypt/] . 

Her case was picked up in a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and echoed in statements by civil society organisations. Despite these actions, German authorities have not yet persecuted anyone. Such inaction by authorities often push journalists in exile to stop reporting or not report attacks against them whatsoever. Her case shows that exile does not guarantee safety for journalists targeted by states seeking to silence them across borders. 

ECPMF’s Mapping Media Freedom (MapMF) platform shows exactly this – through the recently initiated category documenting threats against journalists in exile, ongoing surveillance, digital harassment and family members being targeted are reported. However, cases of transnational repression are rarely documented, not because they don’t exist, but because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue: publicity can endanger journalists’ families at home, expose those in exile to additional targeting, and many affected journalists choose or are advised to remain discreet for safety reasons. 

Transnational repression threatens press freedom and democratic space

Transnational repression is not only an attack on individual journalists, it is a direct assault on press freedom and democratic spaces globally. However, acknowledging the personal strains of those affected is essential: many journalists in exile face isolation, trauma, financial precarity, and the constant fear that reprisals could reach them or their families, friends, and colleagues. 

TNR tactics take place across multiple contexts: through digital harassment, spyware, coordinated smear campaigns, threats to family members, diplomatic pressure, misuse of international legal instruments, or using diaspora networks to intimidate critics abroad. Together, they form a pattern: a systematic effort by authoritarian and autocratising states to suppress independent journalism far beyond their borders. Coupled with the EU’s lack of reaction, this perpetuates cycles of violence and silencing. 

By creating a climate of fear among critical voices and disrupting professional and personal safety TNR systematically undermines freedom of expression, independent journalism and the safety of journalists. Journalists in exile play an indispensable role in informing the public through international reporting, providing independent coverage from authoritarian contexts where local journalism is heavily restricted or impossible.

Gaps in policy and protection in the EU

Increasingly restrictive migration and return policies

The EU’s use of “safe country of origin/ third country” frameworks and streamlined return mechanisms risk exposing journalists to environments where they continue facing repression. Recent decisions by the European Council, endorsed by 39 MEPs , including the designation of countries with documented human rights violations, including press freedom violations as “safe” contradicts the very essence of protection that asylum and refugee policies are meant to provide. 

The EU-wide list of safe countries will include: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia. ECPMF is highly concerned about the dangerous implications of this policy for journalists and human rights defenders. 

Lack of comprehensive frameworks

Current EU instruments still do not provide a systemic approach to TNR. There is no binding definition, no integrated action plan, and no framework that aligns migration policies, human rights obligations, digital safety, and cross-border policing responses to transnational repression. Existing mechanisms remain fragmented, leaving journalists without coherent pathways to protection. 

Fragmented national responses

At the EU member state level, responses to TNR are inconsistent. Few governments started to formally acknowledge the threat and explore legal or policy measures, while others lack official recognition and structured responses. Even when awareness exists, protection mechanisms remain fragmented, under-resourced, or inaccessible. Journalists, just as any other person seeking refuge, also face racial discrimination within domestic systems, which can influence how their cases are treated. 

Civil society has often stepped in where states have not taken responsibility. In Germany, the Coalition Against Transnational Repression has emerged as a key actor, bringing together human rights and diaspora organisations to push for stronger national policies. At the same time, many institutions and law enforcement bodies lack sufficient knowledge or training to identify transnational repression patterns, assess cross-border threats, or understand the jurisdictional complexities involved. Limited cooperation between migration authorities, police, prosecutors, and security services further weakens effective responses. As a result,  national responses remain predominantly reactive rather than preventive, leaving journalists in exile exposed to ongoing risks. 

ECPMF’s position and demands

Transnational repression is pervasive and increasingly dangerous. Journalists who have fled oppression continue to face coordinated pressure, digital harassment, legal threats, and physical intimidation across borders. As seen through the experiences of fellows in ECPMF’s Journalists-in-Exile programme, exile does not guarantee safety. Threats often follow them into Europe, leaving them vulnerable even in countries that are supposed to offer protection.

Current human rights and migration policies fall short of addressing the lived realities of journalists in exile and, in some cases, may even increase the risks they face. EU migration policies could force journalists back into the very environments from which they fled, thereby further jeopardizing their safety. This reflects the wider gap in the protection of journalists, where national and EU responses to transnational repression remain inconsistent, under-resourced, and fragmented.

ECPMF calls on the European Union, its member states and international bodies to take the following actions to better protect journalists in exile and combat transnational repression:

  • Develop and implement comprehensive legal frameworks that recognise the specific cross-border threats faced by journalists in exile, including digital harassment, surveillance, physical attacks, and threats to family members.
  • Ensure the protection of journalists within migration systems, with clear safeguards against forced returns to countries where they face repression, in line with the international principles of non-refoulement.
  • Develop and support national and EU-level mechanisms to monitor and respond to transnational repression, including dedicated hotlines, coordinated support services, and legal aid for affected journalists.
  • Include transnational repression in the EU’s strategic documents and policies for safeguarding democracies and combating disinformation and malicious interference, including the European Democracy Shield and similar documents, to ensure that the protection of those fighting repression is part of a comprehensive approach to preserving our democracies.
  • Incorporate transnational repression explicitly into EU foreign policy, ensuring that the EU’s human rights policies hold countries accountable for using repressive tactics against journalists in exile, as well as creating a system of sanctions and diplomatic pressure to address perpetrators.
  • Strengthen cooperation between member states, creating a coherent and coordinated EU response to transnational repression, with particular attention to the intersectional risks faced by journalists, including race, gender, and migration status.
  • Engage civil society and human rights organisations in the design and implementation of policies related to journalists in exile, ensuring that those who are most affected have a direct role in shaping the response.
This position paper was written by Katrin Schatz, Journalists-in-Exile Programme Manager, with contributions by Basma Mostafa, Journalists-in-Exile Fellow, Edith Bohl, Journalists-in-Exile Programme Officer, and Ena Bavčić, Senior Advocacy and Policy Advisor.
Position Paper: Transnational Repression against Journalists in Exile

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ART and HUMAN RIGHTS 2025- minority artists

January 9, 2026

“Art was my existence, my life. Without it, maybe I wouldn’t have survived,” said Kheder Abdulkarim, a Kurdish-Syrian artist based in Germany and former political prisoner, whose work is inspired by his experience of persecution and erasure. He received an honourable mention at the 4th edition of the International Contest for Minority Artists.

The Contest is an initiative organized jointly by UN Human Rights, Freemuse, Minority Rights Group and the City of Geneva. Since 2024, the contest is also supported by the Centre des Arts of the International School of Geneva, the Loterie Romande, as well as by other donors who prefer to remain anonymous.

Each year, the Contest celebrates minority artists whose work bears witness to struggles for dignity, justice and visibility, forming a cornerstone of UN Human Rights’ efforts to uplift artists as human rights defenders.

The 2025 theme — Belonging, Place and Loss — resonated profoundly with artists around the world whose identities have been shaped by displacement, environmental devastation, structural racism, and generational trauma, generating more than 240 submissions this year.

At the award ceremony, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, reminded the audience of what minority artists reveal to societies.

“Tonight, we celebrate eight minority artists honoured in this edition, the power of art and the vital contribution that minority artists make as they shine a light on human rights struggles across the globe, stories and images that unite and anchor us in a shared humanity,” she said.

Art can be a human rights language, and a catalyst for positive change in societies which may seek to silence minority voices. Claude Cahn, human rights officer at UN Human Rights’ Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section

For many laureates, art is the only archive that survives war, the only place where memory can remain intact.

Alia Al-Saadi is a Palestinian Syrian dancer and choreographer born a third-generation refugee in Yarmouk Camp, and one of the laureates of the contest’s 4th edition.

Her performances turn the body into an “archive of destruction,” she said, and “a state of psychological numbness, where prolonged exposure to violence renders shock ineffective.” 

A woman performs a dance pose on a rooftop, lifting one leg high while leaning sideways. She wears a light top and green shirt. Behind her are beige stone buildings, satellite dishes and metal structures under bright sunlight.

Alia Al-Saadi, a Palestinian-Syrian dancer exploring exile, memory and the body as archive. ©Alia Al-Saadi

Abubakar Moaz, a Sudanese visual artist based in Kenya, won honourable mention and said his visual language emerged from conflict in the Blue Nile and exile in Nairobi.

A large painting shows a figure in red against turquoise and beige tones. Painted sandal shapes hang from strings in front of the canvas, with several placed on the floor. A potted plant stands to the right in a bright gallery space.

Abdulkarim, imprisoned for nearly six years in the infamous Saydnaya Prison in Damascus, began sculpting there with scraps of vegetable crates. “I lost seven years of my life,” he said. “But I try to produce something from those years, to rebuild them and more.” 

An abstract painting features a textured brown figure with outstretched arms surrounded by white, ghostlike silhouettes. Black, white and gray fields with a pale circular form create a distressed, expressive atmosphere.

Emanoel Saravá, an Afro-Indigenous Brazilian visual and photo-performance artist, winner of an honourable mention, treats water as an archive of Black and peripheral suffering through their project Águas Marginais.

A person stands in front of the camera, extending his arms and clasping his hands together. Their wet skin glistens, and they wear a necklace and patterned shorts. A weathered wall with graffiti appears behind them.

“The waters carry the memory of Black and peripheral communities, but they also bear the scars of environmental racism, climate change and neglect,” Saravá said.

Sead Kazanxhiu, a Roma political artist from Albania and laureate of the 4th edition, rejects narratives that reduce Roma communities to victimhood.

A large mosaic on a public building façade depicts figures marching forward with tools, instruments and a red flag. The golden-toned mural spans the top of a stone structure under a clear blue sky.

“The Nest”, installation, wood, metallic wire, polyurethane foam and paint by Sead Kazanxhiu, a Roma visual artist whose public installations confront exclusion and reclaim Roma presence. ©Sead Kazanxhiu

“We have been always treated as victims; with my work, I want somehow to change this narrative toward active citizenship with equal rights,” he said. 

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/12/minority-artists-transform-loss-resistance-and-belonging

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Stronger protection needed for human rights defenders in exile (ODIHR)

October 22, 2025

Panelists discussing the need for stronger protection for human rights defenders in exile. Warsaw, 16 October 2025 (OSCE/Piotr Dziubak) Photo details

As civil society space shrinks and attacks against activists increase in many places, a growing number of human rights defenders are being forced into exile as they seek a safe environment to continue their work freely and securely. This was the focus of an event organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Araminta, and the World Organisation Against Torture at the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference on 16 October 2025.

“Human rights defenders face inherent risks in their work, and relocating does not address all their needs. Adopting robust safeguarding mechanisms is essential to ensure minimum standards for mobility and a safe environment for defenders in exile,“ said Jennifer Gaspar, Araminta Managing Director.

While defenders in exile play a crucial role in promoting human rights, they face serious challenges, from urgent personal and legal issues to long-term barriers such as legal insecurity, restricted mobility and limited opportunities to continue their work. Participants discussed the need to establish minimum standards to protect human rights defenders in exile in the OSCE region, as well as EU legislation to ensure stronger legal and practical safeguards for them, participants discussed.

The discussion drew on both institutional perspectives and the lived experiences of exiled defenders, highlighting the need for coordinated action and policy tools to address these gaps. Participants emphasized that ensuring human rights defenders can continue their work in safety is vital to protect human rights and promote democratic values across the OSCE region and beyond.

See also from 2023: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/10/08/odihr-human-rights-defenders-in-exile-should-be-allowed-to-continue-their-work/

https://www.osce.org/odihr/599757

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NGOs demand to stop the Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders in El Salvador

July 22, 2025

On 3 July 2025, the undersigned 22 organizations, expressed their deep concern over the increasing use of criminal law without due process guarantees, the harassment, the stigmatization, and the persecution by Salvadoran authorities against human rights defenders, community leaders, environmental activists, university professors, lawyers, journalists, and other voices critical of the government.

Prominent journalists, activists, and lawyers, such as former prosecutor and defender Ruth López and professor and constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya, have been arbitrarily detained in retaliation for their work documenting and denouncing corruption, human rights violations, and attacks on the rule of law in El Salvador. Both are in prolonged pretrial detention and face spurious and unfounded charges of embezzlement and money laundering, respectively. These detentions send an intimidating message to the rest of civil society and further erode public confidence in the impartiality and independence of the Salvadoran judicial system.

The Salvadoran state has intensified its attacks on civil society and the independent press through coordinated strategies in the legal, institutional, and media spheres to silence their work. It is extremely alarming that they are being persecuted under a prolonged state of exception that suspends fundamental rights and freedoms, a measure whose objective is to control organized crime gangs.

In a context of high concentration of power, the Foreign Agents Law was enacted, imposing severe restrictions on non-governmental organizations, including onerous registration requirements, a 30 percent tax on foreign funding, and broad powers to suspend their activities based on vague allegations of political activity. Together with the hostile rhetoric from senior officials led by President Bukele, these measures aim to delegitimize independent voices and restrict the legitimate activities of civil society organizations.

The persecution of defenders such as Ruth López and Enrique Anaya reflects a broader strategy to dismantle civic oversight and the rule of law, and to criminalize criticism and the defense of human rights. Other examples of criminalization include community leaders from La Floresta and the El Bosque cooperative, among them Fidel Zavala, Alejandro Henríquez, and Ángel Pérez, who have been detained during peaceful protests over land and evictions. 

It is important to note that, throughout Nayib Bukele’s administration, dozens of human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, former public officials, members of the political opposition, and businesspeople have been forced into exile outside the country. This trend, which is worrying in itself, has significantly increased in the last month, reflecting a growing climate of repression and persecution that severely restricts civic and democratic space in El Salvador.

The repression of civic space in El Salvador is taking place within a broader context of erosion of democratic institutions and the rule of law. As a result of the state of exception, more than 85,000 people have been detained without respect for basic due process guarantees, including the presumption of innocence and access to a fair and impartial trial, and in inhumane conditions of deprivation of liberty. Local organizations have documented at least 400 deaths of people in custody since the beginning of the exception regime.

We therefore call on the Salvadoran State to:

  • ​​Immediately release lawyers Ruth López and Enrique Anaya, as well as all human rights defenders and community leaders who have been arbitrarily detained for political reasons; and respect due process guarantees, including the right to a public trial, in any proceedings against them.
  • Refrain from using pretrial detention as a form of advance punishment against human rights defenders and others detained for political reasons, in clear violation of due process guarantees and international human rights standards.
  • Protect human rights defenders from reprisals, harassment, torture, and threats, and ensure accountability for abuses committed.
  • Restore conditions that allow freedom of expression, association, and assembly, and harmonize national laws with El Salvador’s international obligations, including by repealing the Foreign Agents Law.
  • End the misuse and abuse of emergency measures and, in all cases, guarantee the right to a fair trial.

We also call on the international community, including the Organization of American States and the United Nations, to:

  • Urge the government of El Salvador to immediately cease the instrumentalization of the criminal justice system against human rights defenders or those who express criticism of the government.
  • Take urgent action, through diplomatic channels, assistance, and conditional cooperation, among other means, to protect civic space, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights in El Salvador.
  • Abogadas y Abogados para la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos (México)
  • Alianza Regional por la Libre Expresión e Información
  • Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos -APRODEH, Perú
  • Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS)
  • Centro de Documentación en Derechos Humanos “Segundo Montes Mozo SJ” (CSMM) / Ecuador
  • Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL)
  • Consultora Solidaria (Mexico)
  • Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento – CODHES (Colombia).
  • Convergencia por los Derechos Humanos (CDH), Guatemala
  • Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de los Sucesos de Febrero y Marzo de 1989 (COFAVIC), Venezuela.
  • Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF)
  • Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación (ERIC-SJ). Honduras
  • Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugee Rights
  • Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), Peru
  • Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
  • Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres
  • Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 
  • Synergía, iniciativas para los derechos humanos
  • Tejiendo Redes Infancia en América Latina y el Caribe
  • The International Commission of Jurists
  • Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
El Salvador: Stop the Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders and the Dismantling of the Rule of Law
Bukele: Does the Strongman Show Weakness When Imprisoning Critics?

se also:

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/3508809-el-salvadors-human-rights-defenders-forced-into-exile-amid-rising-repression

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Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) use World Refugee Day to reflect on journalists forced into exile

June 24, 2025
Journalists for Human Rights blog post

On June 20 we marked World Refugee Day by honouring the courage, resilience and humanity of those forced to flee their homes in search of safety.

Many of those fleeing conflict and persecution are journalists themselves. Forced into exile, they risk losing not only their homes but their platforms and their purpose. JHR equips these journalists with training and story grants, so they can keep working even in the most challenging circumstances.

In Canada, Soraya Amiri arrived from Afghanistan in 2022. She began her career here through the JHR-Meta Afghan Journalists in Residence Fellowship at The Walrus. Today, she continues as a Contributing Writer. In this essay, she reflects on what it means to reclaim her voice as a journalist in exile. Read her latest stories here. Mostafa Al-A’sar, another fellow originally from Egypt who resettled in Canada in 2024, joined the Contributing Writers Program in May and is already at work on his first article for The Walrus. Through their stories, Canadians gain a deeper understanding of the lives and events unfolding beyond our borders.

In Europe we fund and train exiled Russian and Belarusian journalists now based in the Baltics and Poland. With our support they continue reporting on shrinking civic space and government repression. Brestskaya Gazeta has documented the lives of former political prisoners, making visible the human toll of repression. Two young Belarusian bloggers used their platforms to counter state propaganda and foster dialogue on democratic values. And SOTA Vision reads letters to political prisoners on livestreams, helping ensure that those imprisoned in Russia are not forgotten.

In Turkey, where millions of Syrians settled after fleeing the now-toppled Assad regime, JHR-trained journalists have helped ensure that language barriers don’t stop refugees from accessing education, that legal aid is available to refugee women and that travel permits helped legally restricted refugees move freely to safer regions after the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake.

At a moment of global upheaval, when self-interest drowns out solidarity, when aid budgets are slashed and the number of displaced people worldwide has never been higher, it is more urgent than ever to stand with refugees.

At JHR, we remain committed to supporting journalists in exile and to equipping local reporters with the tools they need to cover refugee rights objectively and accurately.

WORLD REFUGEE DAY: Ensuring journalists in exile don’t go silent

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UAE: Dissidents, Relatives Designated ‘Terrorists’

April 30, 2025

Emirati authorities have designated as “terrorist” 11 political dissidents and their relatives as well as 8 companies they own, reflecting the country’s indiscriminate use of overbroad counterterrorism laws and contempt for due process, Human Rights Watch said on 22 April 2025.

On January 8, 2025, Emirati authorities announced a cabinet decision unilaterally adding the 11 individuals and 8 companies to its terrorism list for their alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood, without due process. The authorities did not inform these individuals or entities prior to the designation, nor was there any opportunity to respond to or contest the allegations. The move represents an escalation of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) transnational repression, targeting not only dissidents but also their family members.

“Throwing nineteen people and companies onto a list of alleged terrorists without any semblance of due process, and with serious ramifications for their livelihoods, makes a mockery of the rule of law,” said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch…

Human Rights Watch found that all eight companies are solely registered in the United Kingdom and are owned or previously owned by exiled Emirati dissidents or their relatives. At least nine of the eleven designated individuals are political dissidents or their relatives. Only two of the eleven have been convicted or accused of a terrorist offense, though both under questionable circumstances, according to informed sources and the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC), a human rights organization supporting imprisoned human rights defenders in the UAE. One was convicted in absentia as part of the grossly unfair “UAE94” mass trial of political dissidents in 2013. The other was accused in a separate case related to supporting the “UAE94” detainees.

Individuals on the list found out about the designation only after the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the UAE’s official state news agency, published it on its website. It came as “a real shock, it was very difficult,” one of the people named told Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch searched for the individuals and companies on global terror and financial sanctions lists, including the United Nations Global Sanctions list, the European Union Sanctions list, and the Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets in the UK. None of them are included in these internationally recognized lists.

The UAE’s 2014 counterterrorism law uses an overly broad definition of terrorism and allows the executive branch to designate individuals and entities as terrorists without any corresponding legal requirement to demonstrate the objective basis of the claim. It does not set out a clear procedure for how this authority should be exercised, nor does it provide for any oversight.

Designated individuals face immediate asset freezes and property confiscation under the counterterrorism law and Cabinet Decision No. 74/2020. Those in the UAE, including relatives or friends, face a possible sentence of life in prison for communicating with anyone on the list. Human Rights Watch found that the designation has negatively affected individuals’ careers and personal finances, including through lost career opportunities and clients.

Exiled Emirati dissidents said the designations are part of the UAE’s ongoing crackdown on dissent and political opposition. “They want to hurt us as much as possible,” one individual whose name appeared on the list said.

Over the last decade, Emirati authorities have repeatedly targeted the Muslim Brotherhood and its Emirati branch, the Reform and Social Guidance Association (Al-Islah), in a widespread crackdown. Al-Islah is a nonviolent group that engaged in peaceful political debate in the UAE for many years prior to the crackdown and advocated greater adherence to Islamic precepts. Many of the detainees from the grossly unfair “UAE94” mass trial in 2013 are members of Al-Islah. The UAE designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in 2014.

The 2014 counterterrorism law enables the courts to convict peaceful government critics as terrorists and sentence them to death. The law has been repeatedly used against political dissidents. In July 2024, 53 human rights defenders and political dissidents were sentenced to abusively long terms in the country’s second-largest unfair mass trial.

The UN’s first special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights has said that terrorism should be defined as narrowly as possible, warning that “the adoption of overly broad definitions … carries the potential for deliberate misuse of the term … as well as unintended human rights abuses.”

…The UAE appears to be escalating its persecution beyond openly outspoken dissidents to include family members who have not participated in politics nor spoken publicly about the country’s human rights record. “Many people whose names are on the list, they didn’t speak loudly against the government,” one person said.

In 2021, the UAE added 38 individuals and 15 entities to its terrorism list, including 4 prominent exiled Emirati dissidents. Human Rights Watch found that 14 of the 38 individuals and two of the entities are on other international global terror and financial sanctions lists. None of the individuals nor entities added on January 2025 were found on other internationally recognized lists…

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/04/22/uae-dissidents-relatives-designated-terrorists

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The Burundi crisis has been forgotten; interview with a Armel Niyongere, Burundian in exile

April 25, 2025

On 23 April, 2025 OMCT made public this interview with Armel Niyongere, exiled Burundian lawyer and Secretary General of SOS-Torture Burundi, a member of the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) SOS-Torture network. He continues to denounce human rights violations in his home country. Despite 10 years of threats and intimidation from the authorities, Mr. Niyongere continues his fight to promote and protect human rights. In this interview he talks about the difficulties of exile, the challenges facing those who defend human rights, and the role of the international community.

https://www.omct.org/en/resources/blog/burundian-crisis-forgotten-armel-niyongere-exil

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Exile is ‘a little bit less than death’ for Virginia Laparra forced to flee Guatemala

March 12, 2025

On 5 March 2025 Haroon Siddique in the Guardian wrote about Virginia Laparra, a Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutor, who spent two years in prison after reporting her suspicion that a judge leaked sealed details of a case. She was forced into exile after being pursued by the country’s conservative elite.

In January last year, she was released under house arrest but in July was jailed for five years for another charge relating to her work. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/01/04/virginia-laparra-former-impunity-prosecutor-in-guatemala-released/]

Facing the prospect of going back to prison and further charges, Laparra left her two daughters behind to seek asylum across the border in Mexico.

In an interview with the Guardian in London after receiving the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk’s Sir Henry Brooke award honouring human rights defenders, Laparra said: “Nobody goes into exile voluntarily. Exile is the only thing left when nothing else has worked, it’s the only thing you’ve got left to defend your life and your freedom.

Protesters in Guatemala City demand the release of Virginia Laparra. ‘This is a political dispute, not a legal one,’ said a member of her defence team.

“Exile is just little bit different, a little bit less than death. [Your persecutors] take everything from you, take away your family, your children, your parents, your house, your way of life, your friends.’

Laparra headed a special prosecutor’s office working alongside the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), a UN anti-corruption mission that was controversially expelled in September 2019 by the then president, Jimmy Morales. Widespread reprisals followed against those who had worked with Cicig.

When Laparra was taken taken into preventive detention, she said it was as “if I were the worst drugs trafficker in Guatemala. When we drove out of the underground parking in my building there were soldiers, the police, hooded, with heavy weapons on both sides of the street. It was like in a film.”

She spent her first five months in solitary confinement in a windowless 2.5 sq meter cell in a high security jail in Guatemala City, 200 miles away from her Quetzaltenango home, and allowed out for only one hour a day.

She also endured bleeding to the womb in prison but waited months for treatment. Laparra eventually had a hysterectomy and four subsequent operations, during which she said police surrounded “the hospital, the gynaecology area, the operation room, and I had on each side of my bed a member of the police”.

She was later transferred to Matamoros prison, another notorious facility where drug traffickers and gang leaders are held, after she angered the authorities by speaking to a journalist. “My idea was that at least if I’m going to die [in jail], let’s make sure the world knows what happened,” said Laparra.

She considered pleading guilty in the hope that she might be released as both her sentences were commutable, which in Guatemala usually means no jail time is served, but her daughters told her: “Don’t do that, you’ve been here too long to give up now.”

When things reached their lowest ebb, Laparra said she decided to kill herself before remembering the promise she made to her daughters each time they visited – that she would be there the next time they came.

After her release on house arrest last year, she received an award from Guatemala’s current progressive president, Bernardo Arévalo, a surprise victor in the 2023 election. But Laparra believes the award only inflamed the pursuit of her by the public prosecutor’s office led by the attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, who had also tried to stop Arévalo from taking office.

Porras, who has pursued many other anti-corruption prosecutors and judges, also forced into exile her predecessor as attorney general and has been sanctioned by the US for corruption and the Council of the European Union for undermining democracy.

The Fund for Global Human Rights, which nominated Laparra for the Sir Henry Brooke award, and Amnesty International, which named her as a prisoner of conscience in 2022, said they were “deeply concerned about the systematic pattern of criminalisation imposed by the Guatemalan judiciary and the public prosecutor’s office against former judges, prosecutors, human rights defenders and journalists who have worked tirelessly for years to fight impunity and corruption in the country”.

Laparra says she feels proud to have received the award but adds that her persecutors reacted to the news with anger online. “I thought that it wasn’t possible to keep hate burning for so long,” she said. “Surely, two years in prison would have been enough for them, I thought, but it wasn’t.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/05/virginia-laparra-lawyer-guatemala

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The Human Rights Foundation shows the documentary “Dissidents” on 2 February

January 29, 2025
A screening of the feature documentary “Dissidents” will take place on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. EST. The event location is Firehouse Cinema, 87 Lafayette Street, New York. “Dissidents” tells the story of three Chinese dissidents who continue to fight for democracy against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through art, protest, and grassroots organizing despite being exiled from their own home and despite the CCP’s transnational attempts to threaten them with violence, criminal charges, and arson. The film features Juntao Wang, a primary organizer of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests; Weiming Chen, a human rights artist whose sculpture criticizing Xi Jinping was burnt down; and asylum seeker Chunyan Wang, who was arrested for attempting to deliver a petition letter to Chinese vice premiers during the US-China trade talks.
VIEW THE TRAILER
After the film, there will be a panel discussion featuring: Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House Joey Siu, Hong Kong activist and executive council member at the World Liberty Congress Weiming Chen, human rights artist known for the Liberty Sculpture Park in CaliforniaYi Chen, director of “Dissidents” at C35 FilmsPema Doma, Executive Director, Students For a Free Tibet
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Please be sure to RSVP on Eventbrite as soon as possible, as reservations are granted on a first come, first serve basis.
RSVP HERE

https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/call-for-applications-hrf-uyghur-workshop-9101325?e=f80cec329e

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Profile of Wendy Flores, human rights defender from Nicaragua

April 24, 2024

On 19 April 2024, the OHCHR published the story of Wendy Flores -Risking it all to stand up for human rights in exile

Wendy Flores, Nicaraguan human rights defender presenting report at the 55th session of the Human Rights Council. © Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Más

“I had to leave Nicaragua irregularly. I left with a backpack, my computer, and the feeling that I was leaving my country for having defended other victims, for having accompanied them. I felt like I had committed a crime, when what I had been doing was defending human rights,” said Wendy Flores, a human rights defender from Nicaragua.

Flores studied law and became motivated to defend human rights after observing the injustices occurring in her country. She later joined the non-profit organization Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CENIDH) as an intern in April 2002.

“I began to realise that I was a human rights defender because I was working for the victims, for their rights and supporting them as they faced a series of obstacles in the country,” Flores said.

Flores is currently living in exile, after the government began to cancel the legal status of several civil society organisations dedicated to the defence of human rights, as well as detaining their members, following the protests of April 2018.

According to an Office report, in early April 2018, demonstrations led by environmental groups, the rural peasant population and students erupted in Nicaragua to denounce the slow and insufficient response of the Government to forest fires in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve. After this, more dissatisfaction grew from among the public from social security reform to the reduction of pension payments, which led to even more protests. The people protesting were quickly seen as Government opponents, which resulted in the repression of the protests, the criminalization of demonstrators and their arrests.

“During the last five years, in Nicaragua more than 3,600 civil society organizations have been cancelled. In December 2018, CENIDH was one of the first 10 organisations to be cancelled,” Flores said. “And even when we said we would continue to defend human rights, unfortunately we didn’t manage to do so inside the country because detentions started happening and it was obvious that that was going to prevent me from doing my job as a defender.”

Flores had to leave Nicaragua because of the risk of being criminalised for defending human rights and putting her family in jeopardy. “Feeling that I was leaving behind, even temporarily, my almost newborn son and my daughter, was one of the hardest situations I’ve faced,” Flores said.

Leaving Nicaragua forced Flores to reinvent her work as a human rights defender and with other human rights defenders who were also in exile, she established the human rights collective Nicaragua Nunca Más (Nicaragua Never Again). The collective aims to support victims, denounce human rights violations, and sends a symbolic message that, despite many obstacles and the need to live in exile, they continue to fight against impunity for human rights violations in Nicaragua.

“We were emotionally broken, apart from our families, disjointed, but we had the strength to continue denouncing human rights violations. And that was the main motivation that we had and that I identified with. In February 2019, we held a press conference to announce that we would continue our work as defenders in exile,” Flores said.

“And since then, we’ve continued to document cases of displaced people in Nicaragua. We’ve managed to identify more than 1140 cases in these five years. We’ve documented the way in which acts of torture have been perpetrated against political prisoners,” Flores said. “We’ve identified more than 40 methods of torture used against political prisoners and their families. And we’ve also identified perpetrators within these documented cases.”

Flores knows that those who remain in Nicaragua face danger, but she points out that there are also extraterritorial risks.

“Those of us who are outside have also experienced acts of siege and surveillance by State forces or forces installed outside Nicaraguan territory to persecute and intimidate defenders. In addition, the denationalisation imposed by authorities, affected more than 317 people who are mainly outside Nicaragua,” Flores said.

“For us to be able to return to Nicaragua, we would need a country that complies with international obligations, that initiates a process of dialogue with international mechanisms for the protection of human rights and that shows evidence that the country is going to undertake a democratic process and respect human rights,” Flores said.

For Flores, some of this evidence would include allowing international organisms such as UN Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to return to the country.

Our work for defenders in exile

Flores said the impact of UN Human Rights work for human rights defenders in exile has been vital for her as a human rights defender and the human rights movement in her country.

“The UN Human Rights Regional Office for Central America and the Caribbean (ROCA) supports the work of defenders in exile by providing technical assistance to facilitate their access to the human rights mechanisms of the UN and accountability at the international level, such as universal jurisdiction,” said Alberto Brunori, the Representative at ROCA.

Thanks to successive resolutions adopted since 2019, the Human Rights Council addresses the situation in Nicaragua at its sessions through oral updates and written reports submitted by UN Human Rights.

In addition, in 2022, the Council promoted the creation the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua to promote accountability,.

This way, the Office has succeeded in bringing the human rights violations that continue to occur in Nicaragua to the attention of the international community and has supported a solution to the crisis based on human rights principles and standards.

“The Office has advocated for host countries to provide defenders fleeing Nicaragua with the protection they need, as well as the necessary support for their work,” Brunori said.

“Human rights defenders who are forced to leave the country need international protection as they require a safe legal situation that allows them to continue promoting human rights without fear of being returned to Nicaragua,” Brunori said. “They also need their claims of insecurity in exile to be considered. Their work requires financial resources and the necessary political support to ensure that their work, their analysis, and their human rights proposals are included in the decisions that are made about Nicaragua at the international level. Supporting their work means contributing to a more democratic and human rights-based future for the country.”

For Flores, it is essential that the international community continues to keep an eye on Nicaragua.

“Networking and the work that other organisations can do, supporting human rights defenders, really becomes an action for life, because to live is not only to breathe and feed oneself, but to live has to be to live fully, and this has to do with the psychological, mental and physical conditions in which we can carry out our work,” Flores said.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/04/risking-it-all-stand-human-rights-exile

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