In her latest report to the UN General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association , Gina Romero, underscored the effects of a growing negative rhetoric directed at civil society and activists.
The Special Rapporteur presented her report ‘Protecting the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association from Stigmatization’ in an interactive dialogue with States at the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee.
The report highlights the growing number of harmful narratives that stigmatise civil society groups and activists engaged in association and peaceful assemblies, labeling them as ‘enemies or threats to security and values.’
The Special Rapporteur highlighted an alarming trend of harmful narratives that undermine the legitimacy of peaceful activism and target human rights defenders and the public for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and association. She discussed how activists and organisations face stigmatising labels and accusations for organising peaceful protests, forming associations, and bringing urgent issues to the attention of authorities and the international community. Her report listed specific narratives and language used in various countries to stigmatise the work of civil society organisations and activists.
Particularly vulnerable to these harmful attacks are advocates for ethnic and religious minorities, women, children, young activists, LGBTIQ+ people, environmental and Indigenous activists, and defenders of democracy, transparency, and fair elections, with trade unions and labor rights groups also being targeted frequently.
These narratives result in the restriction of human rights. While most States participating in the interactive dialogue welcomed the report, some rejected the references to their country in the report, including China, India, Iran, and Russia. Several States asked the Rapporteur about best practices and concrete examples to support and protect the right to peaceful assembly and association.
Gina Romero responded that States should avoid stigmatising protesters and civil society, facilitate peaceful assembly and association, and ensure any restrictions are evidence-based and meet the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality. She also responded to criticism from China, India, Iran and Russia by emphasising the challenges faced when there are no responses from States to inquiries, denial of requests for country visits, or lack of clear information about state actions and called on states to engage more openly with her mandate.
The Special Rapporteur also noted that harmful narratives from both State and non-State actors restrict access to freedoms of assembly and association, leading to rights violations and shrinking civic space. She called on States to detect, monitor, and counter such cases to ‘prevent undue legal restrictions and repression of these freedoms, which create a cycle of repression and stigmatization’ and implement legal and policy reforms.
On July 1, 2024 AI published the findings of a survey which says that three out of five child and young human rights defenders face online harassment in connection with their activism, according to a new analysis of 400 responses to an Amnesty International questionnaire, distributed to young activists across 59 countries. More than 1400 young activists participated in the survey conducted as a part of Amnesty International’s global campaign to “Protect the Protest.”
Of those, 400 youth activists aged between 13 to 24 years agreed to the publication of their data.
They faced harassment in the form of hateful comments, threats, hacking and doxing which is often linked to offline abuse and political persecution often perpetrated by state actors with little or no response from Big Tech platforms resulting in the silencing of young people.
The highest rates of online harassment were reported by young activists in Nigeria and Argentina.
“I have been harassed […] by a stranger because of my pronouns. The stranger told me it is not possible to be a ‘they/them’ and kept sending messages about how I am crazy for identifying the way I identify. I had to ignore the person’s messages,” said a 17-year-old Nigerian queer LGBTI activist who asked not to be identified.
Another young activist – 21-year-old male Nigerian LBGTI rights activist said, “People disagree with my liberal progressive views, and immediately check my profile to see that I am queer Nigerian living in Nigeria, and they come at me with so much vitriol. I am usually scared to share my opinion on apps like TikTok because I can go viral. The internet can be a very scary place,” he said adding that, “Someone cat fishing as a gay man, lured me into coming out to see him after befriending me for a while, and then he attacked me with his friends. This is Nigeria, I couldn’t go to the police for secondary victimization.”
Twenty-one percent of respondents say they are trolled or threatened on a weekly basis and close to a third of the young activists say that they have censored themselves in response to tech-facilitated violence, with a further 14 percent saying they have stopped posting about human rights and their activism altogether.
“I always think twice before making a comment, when I express my political position, I start to get many comments that not only have to do with my position, but also with my body, my gender identity or my sexuality,” said Sofía*, a 23-year-old human rights defender from Argentina shared her experience on X formerly known as Twitter.
The survey respondents said they faced the most abuse on Facebook, with 87 percent of the platform’s users reporting experiences of harassment, compared to 52 percent on X and 51 percent on Instagram.
The most common forms of online harassment are upsetting and disrespectful “troll” comments (60 percent) and upsetting or threatening direct messages (52 percent).
Five percent of the young activists say they have faced online sexual harassment, too, reporting that users posted intimate images (including real and AI-generated images) of them without consent.
For many of the survey participants harassment in relation to their online activism is not limited to the digital world either. Almost a third of respondents reported facing offline forms of harassment, from family members and people in their personal lives to negative repercussions in school, police questioning and political persecution.
Twenty-year-old non-binary activist Aree* from Thailand shared their experience of facing politically motivated prosecution in five different cases whilst they were still a child.
Abdul* a 23-year-old Afghan activist reported being denied work at a hospital after authorities found out about his social media activism.
The Israel-Gaza war currently stands out as an issue attracting high levels of abusive online behaviour, but the threat of online harassment appears to be omnipresent across all leading human rights issues. Peace and security, the rule of law, economic and gender equality, social and racial justice, and environmental protection all served as “trigger topics” for the attacks.
However, the way young activists are targeted varies and appears to be closely linked to intersectional experiences of discrimination, likely harming survivors of identity-based abuse in longer lasting ways than issue-based harassment.
Twenty-one percent of respondents say they have been harassed in connection with their gender and twenty percent in connection with their race or ethnicity. Smaller percentages said they face abuse in connection with their socio-economic background, age, sexual orientation and/or disabilities.
“At first it was simply hateful comments since the posts I published were daring and spoke openly about LGBT rights, which later made me receive threats in private messages and it went further when my account was hacked,” said Paul a 24-year-old activist from Cameroon, on being targeted for his LGBTI related activism adding that, “For 2 years, I have been living in total insecurity because of the work I do as an advocate for the rights of my community online.”
For Paul and many other young activists, online harassment is having deep effects on their mental health. Forty percent of the respondents say they have felt a sense of powerlessness and nervousness or are afraid of using social media. Some respondents have even felt unable to perform everyday tasks and felt physically unsafe. Accordingly, psychological support is the most popular form of support which young activists call for, ahead of easier to use reporting mechanisms and legal support.
Many of the young activists voiced frustrations over leading social media platforms’ failure to adequately respond to their reports of harassment saying the abusive comments are left on the platforms long after being flagged.
Some respondents also felt that social media platforms are playing an active part in silencing them; multiple activists reported that they found posts about the war in Gaza removed, echoing previous reports of content advocating for Palestinian rights being subject to potentially discriminatory moderation by various platforms.
Others highlighted platforms’ role in enabling state-led intimidation and censorship campaigns, undermining activists’ hope for government regulation to provide answers to the challenge of tech-facilitated violence.
On 22 May 2024 Front Line Defenders launched its Global Analysis 2023/24 on the situation of human rights defenders (HRDs) at risk around the world, an in-depth annual publication detailing the variety of risks, threats and attacks faced by HRDs around the world.
The report also reveals statistics gathered and verified by the HRD Memorial initiative – which Front Line Defenders coordinates – documenting the killings of at least 300 HRDs in 28 countries in 2023. Almost a third of those killed (31%) were Indigenous people’s rights defenders. This brings the total documented killings of HRDs in the last decade to nearly 3,000.
“This appalling wave of attacks on human rights defenders is a direct result of an international human rights framework left in tatters and governments’ double standards when it comes to respecting human rights,” said Alan Glasgow, Executive Director of Front Line Defenders. “A quarter decade after the UN adopted a Declaration on human rights defenders, not enough progress has been made to ensure defenders are valued and protected. In this time, thousands of defenders have paid with their lives and many more face ongoing attacks and intimidation for their peaceful work. Urgent action is needed to change this.”
Wide-ranging risks to HRDs
Globally, the violation most commonly cited by HRDs was arbitrary arrest/detention (15%), followed by legal action (13%), continuing an ongoing trend of criminalisation as the most-reported risk. This was followed by death threats (10.2%), surveillance (9.8%) and physical attacks (8.5%). Trans and non gender-conforming HRDs reported slightly higher rates of physical attacks, and a much greater risk of smear campaigns. Globally, the five most targeted areas of human rights defence were: LGBTIQ+ rights (10.2%); Women’s rights (9.7%); Human rights movements (8.5%); Indigenous peoples’ rights (7.1%); and Human rights documentation (5.2%).
The statistics in the Global Analysis are derived from Front Line Defenders’ casework and approved grant applications between 1 January and 31 December 2023. The statistics are based on 1,538 reported violations in 105 countries. Front Line Defenders documents multiple violations per case or grant, as this is the reality of the situation for human rights defenders. For more details on how these and the HRD Memorial data are gathered, please refer to the Methodology section at the end of the report.
To mark the Day of the Endangered Lawyer, the Law Society of England and Wales issued a press release on 24 January honouring legal professionals who are targeted for upholding the rule of law and defending a strong justice system.
The Law Society has published its annual intervention tracker which shows that the Society took 40 actions relating to 17 countries in 2023. Most of these actions were initiated by concerns relating to arbitrary arrest or detention (58%) followed by harassment, threats and violence (27%).
Law Society president Nick Emmerson said: “Across the world, lawyers continue to face harassment, surveillance, detention, torture, enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrest and conviction...
We use this day to draw attention to the plight faced by countless lawyers across the globe, as they fight for their right to freely exercise their profession and uphold the rule of law.
A recent example comes from Amnesty International on 25 January 2024: On 31 October 2023, human rights lawyer, Hoda Abdelmoniem, was due to be released after serving her unjust five-year prison sentence stemming solely from the exercise of her human rights. Instead, the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) ordered her pretrial detention pending investigations into similar bogus terrorism-related charges in a separate case No. 730 of 2020. During a rare visit to 10th of Ramadan prison on 4 January, her family learned that her health continues to deteriorate and that she developed an ear infection, affecting her balance and sight. She must be immediately and unconditionally released. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/11/29/2020-award-of-european-bars-associations-ccbe-goes-to-seven-egyptian-lawyers-who-are-in-prison/]
“Activism is not terrorism” . . . five Filipino indigenous peoples’ leaders and advocates have been branded as “terrorist” individuals and their property and funds have been frozen. Image: CIVICUS
On 28 July, 2023 CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations, has protested to Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in an open letter over the “judicial harassment” of human rights defenders and the designation of five indigenous rights activists as “terrorists“.
CIVICUS, representing some 15,000 members in 75 countries, says the harassment is putting the defenders “at great risk”.
It has also condemned the “draconian” Republic Act No. 11479 — the Anti-Terrorism Act — for its “weaponisation’ against political dissent and human rights work and advocacy in the Philippines.
The CIVICUS open letter said there were “dire implications on the rights to due process and against warrantless arrests, among others”.
The letter called on the Philippine authorities to:
Immediately end the judicial harassment against 10 human rights defenders by withdrawing the petition in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84;
Repeal Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating the six human rights defenders as terrorist individuals and unfreeze their property and funds immediately and unconditionally;
Drop all charges under the ATA against activists in the Southern Tagalog region; and
Halt all forms of intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders, ensure an enabling environment for human rights defenders and enact a law for their protection.
On 6 July 2023 Janika Spannagel in Open Global Rights comes with a study of great importance to the work for human rights defenders. The researcher states that “focusing only on defenders’ physical integrity risks undermining the very idea of supporting agents of human rights change” and that there is a need to Rethink campaigns on human rights defenders
Instead of summarising I will provide large quotes:
,,,,The theory of change put forward by actors, including Front Line Defenders, International Service for Human Rights, and many others, claims that by protecting local human rights activists, international campaigns can support them in their work to advance human rights protection on the ground. This assumption appears plausible and aligns with prominent accounts in academic human rights literature, where domestic activists’ protection from repression is seen as a way to open spaces for them to challenge the regime and enact change.
That said, empirical evidence from UN casework and the experience of Tunisian defenders shows that this promise has not been fulfilled when it comes to human rights defenders in authoritarian regimes, as I show in my recent book. There, I argue that, while international attention can have important protective benefits, it does little to support individual human rights defenders as agents of change in repressive contexts. [Emphasis added]
The reason for this is that international casework on defenders, including urgent action–like campaigns or UN communications, maintain the traditional focus on physical integrity rights that has guided the long-standing casework on political imprisonment, torture, or enforced disappearances. In doing so, it overlooks the many administrative, discursive, and covert forms of repression that typically bypass international scrutiny more broadly but that often very effectively disrupt and thwart defenders’ work toward change.
The analysis of over 12,000 individual cases of human rights activists taken up by the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders between 2000 and 2016 reveals that, in almost three-quarters of them, at least one of the violations described fell within the category of physical integrity violations. Detention cases alone made up 56% of all cases raised during that period. In contrast, only 4% of the cases dealt exclusively with softer types of repression, such as travel bans, bureaucratic issues, job dismissals, surveillance, or defamation.
This distribution far from represents the everyday experience of human rights defenders in authoritarian states—instead, it is reflective of a humanitarian instinct in human rights casework to privilege cases that are considered most severe. One could argue that UN communications, and perhaps attention-based campaigning more broadly, are inherently humanitarian, not transformative instruments. But one should ask: What, then, is the purpose of focusing on human rights defenders, as opposed to any victim of repression? [Emphasis added]
The priority given to physical integrity violations has two important adverse consequences. First, we can see that the data profoundly shape our understanding of what human rights defenders are struggling with. For example, on the basis of such data a CIVICUS report claims that in order to repress civic space, states resort “most often” to detention of activists, attacks against journalists, and excessive use of force against protesters. The human rights community’s own focus on violent repression thus paradoxically misleads us to believe that this is where most attention is needed.
Secondly, this focus reinforces a protection gap for violations that fall outside of the conventional notion of state repression as physically harmful and as undeniably politically motivated. Research on repression highlights that authoritarian states engage in repressive substitution, where they replace highly scrutinized coercive tactics—typically harder and overt types of repression—with softer and more covert measures. The case of Tunisia under Ben Ali aptly illustrates the strong impact of such tactics on defenders’ ability to carry out meaningful work.
When analyzing the further development of cases taken up by the UN, I also found that, while some positive effects of the UN’s attention could be identified for most of them, many did not see an actual improvement relative to the reported violations over the course of the next year; where they did, it was mostly an easing of harder repression. Ultimately, there is a real risk that governments continue to use hard repression to increase their bargaining power and then pass off a release from prison as a costly concession, while in reality imposing softer but equally effective measures against the activist in question.
With this problem in mind, what could be done differently? Casework that follows a transformative logic should not seek to maximize the reduction of physical harm—the humanitarian logic—but should define protection needs in terms of safeguarding a defender’s ability to do effective human rights work.
Those engaging in casework and campaigns on human rights defenders should actively revisit their priorities in terms of the violations they tend to address. Far too often, softer repression remains unreported, unnoticed, and not acted upon, which effectively creates a twilight zone in which authoritarian states can comfortably stifle opposition voices without risking much pushback. We owe it to the countless number of human rights activists around the world to ensure that the label of “human rights defender” does not merely serve to laud their heroism and excite donors and the media, but that it is dedicated to fulfilling its promise of human rights change.
The 80-year-old former parliament member has been engaged in activism since the last years of the Soviet Union, helping create the now-dissolved Memorial organization in 1988. He said in a statement on Friday that worries about his personal safety, including “shadowy information about what they intended to do to me,” have forced him to take a break abroad.
“I doubt that my leave of absence will last long,” said Ponomarev, whose name has been added to Moscow’s list of “foreign agents” in Russia.
Ponomarev did not disclose his new location, saying only that he continued to closely follow the “worrying” news in Russia.
The charge, which falls under a new law introduced after Russia’s Feb. 24 launch of the campaign, could see Kara-Murza, 40, jailed for up to 15 years. Kara-Murza was due to appear in a Moscow court later Friday, Interfax said.
The authorities in Thailand should urgently investigate an incident intended to intimidate a prominent human rights defender, Human Rights Watch said on 13 April, 2022.
On April 12, 2022, at about 6 a.m., an unidentified assailant threw a pair of 9-inch-long scissors at the house of Angkhana Neelapaijit in Bangkok, making a hole in her front door. Security camera footage showed what appeared to be a woman wearing a face mask and a dark t-shirt with the Thai numeral 9 standing in front of the house, throwing the scissors, and then running away. Angkhana, 66, is a former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand and a newly appointed member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/0D5DED3E-F79F-4AB4-8261-F6A19486F062
“Violent acts intended to intimidate a well-known figure like Angkhana not only pose a threat to her and her family, but send a spine-chilling message to the entire Thai human rights community,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Thai government should respond immediately by undertaking a serious investigation to ensure that everyone responsible for this incident is held accountable.”
Angkhana told Human Rights Watch that she and her family felt vulnerable after the Justice Ministry canceled her protection under the government’s witness protection program on April 1. The authorities claimed the service was no longer needed because Angkhana’s life would no longer be in danger after the Department of Special Investigation ended its investigation of the enforced disappearance of her husband, the prominent human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit. [See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/17/where-is-somchai-a-brave-wifes-17-year-quest-for-the-truth/]
“The Thai government should not ignore this disturbing incident, which appears to be a response to Angkhana’s effective human rights advocacy,” Pearson said. “Foreign governments and the United Nations should press the Thai government to urgently act to protect Angkhana and other human rights defenders in the country.”
On 14 February 2022 FIDH published a joint statement to support Sri Lankan human rights defender Ambika Satkunanathan:
We the undersigned human rights organizations, express our deep concern about the statement issued by the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry on February 4, 2022, in which the government denounced testimony given by Ambika Satkunanathan, a leading human rights lawyer, to the European Parliament on January 27. The government statement clearly constitutes an act of harassment and intimidation. We condemn the Sri Lankan government’s tactics to intimidate human rights defenders, and express our full solidarity with Ms. Satkunanathan, a well-known, respected and courageous human rights defender. Targeting her for providing accurate testimony about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka to the European Parliament is completely unacceptable, and sends a chilling message to all Sri Lankan civil society, especially those in the north and east, who are already operating under considerable duress under the current administration.
Sri Lanka’s international partners, including the European Union, should publicly condemn the Sri Lankan government’s statement and express solidarity with Ms. Satkunanathan, who has been targeted for her international engagement, and increase their efforts to engage with Sri Lankan civil society at large.
The Foreign Ministry’s statement contains numerous false claims in an attempt to disparage and delegitimize a distinguished human rights advocate, placing her at risk of physical danger in retribution for her brave work. The government’s claim that her testimony was “reminiscent of LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] propaganda that once stoked hatred among communities,” and that “such allegations need to be refuted in the interest of social harmony” Is particularly insidious and dangerous.
The government’s statement mirrors its repeated practice of falsely equating human rights defenders and human rights advocacy with those pursuing “terrorism.” The statement’s language aligns these baseless allegations with vague and frequently abused provisions under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), exposing Ms. Satkunanathan to a heightened risk of threats, attacks and persecution.
Ms. Satkunanathan was a commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka before that body’s independence was compromised under the current administration and led the first national study on Sri Lanka’s prisons. Prior to that, she was for many years a legal consultant to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is the author of an important recent report on abuses committed during the so-called “war on drugs.”
We are concerned that the government’s statement seeks to place the blame on human rights defenders if the European Union determines that Sri Lanka failed to meet its human rights commitments under GSP+, the preferential tariff system. The European Union should remind the Sri Lankan government that the responsibility to uphold its international human rights obligations rests with the government. The government’s treatment of human rights defenders reflects its lack of respect for international human rights law.
We support Ms. Satkunanathan’s testimony to the European Parliament, which accurately described a situation already reported by the United Nations and many domestic and international human rights organizations. The government’s response contains numerous false statements, including:
The government claims to be “engaged in long standing cooperation with the UN human rights mechanisms and the UN Human Rights Council.” On the contrary, in February 2020, soon after taking office, the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa withdrew Sri Lankan support from consensus resolutions of the council, repudiating commitments made by the previous government. Special Procedures mandate holders of the Council issued a statement on February 5, 2021, noting that their recommendations, including on torture, the independence of the judiciary, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, minority rights, counterterrorism, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of assembly and association, had been ignored.
The government claims to be “strengthen[ing] rule of law, access to justice and accountability.” However, President Rajapaksa campaigned on a platform of protecting “war heroes” from prosecution, and has appointed individuals implicated in war crimes to senior government posts. His presidential commission on “political victimization” has sought to interfere in judicial proceedings and block trials and investigations in human rights cases implicating the president’s associates and the president himself. The president pardoned Sunil Ratnayake, one of very few members of the armed forces ever convicted of human rights violations, who murdered eight Tamil civilians including children.
The government denies that civic space is shrinking, as Ms. Satkunanathan described in her testimony. Yet under the current government, many human rights defenders have said that they are subjected to continual government intimidation, intrusive surveillance, and attempts to block their access to funds. In her most recent update to the Human Rights Council, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet wrote that, “surveillance, intimidation and judicial harassment of human rights defenders, journalists and families of the disappeared has not only continued, but has broadened to a wider spectrum of students, academics, medical professionals and religious leaders critical of government policies.” The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery in his end-of-mission statement last December documented government intimidation of civil society and a “shrinking civic space.”
The government claims there is no “concrete evidence of discrimination against minorities.” In fact, for nearly a year the government banned the burial of people said to have died with Covid-19, causing immense distress to the Muslim community without any medical justification in what is only but one example of discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. Such burials are now permitted only at a single remote site. In January 2021 High Commissioner Bachelet found that, “Tamil and Muslim minorities are being increasingly marginalized and excluded in statements about the national vision and Government policy… Sri Lanka’s Muslim community is increasingly scapegoated.” The High Commissioner’s findings are in line with reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others that the Prevention of Terrorism Act is used almost exclusively against members of the Tamil and Muslim communities. The government continues to deny efforts to commemorate war victims belonging to the Tamil community.
The government denies Ms. Satkunanathan’s description of alleged extrajudicial killings committed in the context of Sri Lanka’s “war on drugs.” However, these abuses are widely documented. In September, High Commissioner Bachelet said, “I am deeply concerned about further deaths in police custody, and in the context of police encounters with alleged drug criminal gangs, as well as continuing reports of torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.”
The Sri Lankan government’s statement attacking Ambika Satkunanathan for her testimony to the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights exemplifies threats faced by human rights defenders, particularly when they engage with foreign and international forums, and it further shows the government’s refusal to address the ongoing serious human rights violations taking place in the country. Instead of trying to silence those who seek to defend human rights, the government should give serious consideration to their input and contributions, and take urgent action to ensure that they can work in a safe environment without fear of reprisals.
On 18 January 2022 a new report by Safeguard Defenders, inspired Al-Jazeera (Erin Hale) to write about how the Chinese authorities are trying to coerce critics thousands of miles from home into returning.
Wang Jingyou was living in Turkey last year when he found that the 7,000 kilometres (4350 miles) between him and his homeland was no obstacle to an offended Chinese state. Wang had left China after voicing his support on TikTok for Hong Kong’s democracy protests, but after he questioned the outcome of an Indian-Chinese border clash on social media in February 2021, mainland authorities sprung into action.
Within half an hour of the post, police in his hometown of Chongqing had visited his parents. Then they detained them. They said Wang, who is in his early twenties, had “slandered and belittled heroes” while also “picking quarrels”, two charges that in China are often used to silence government critics.
“I’m not in China, I’m in Europe,” Wang told Al Jazeera. “I just said something. I didn’t do anything and they put my (name) on a wanted (list) in the government website, in the official media, also in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs too.”
Wang soon found himself on a months-long journey of harassment that saw him detained while flying through Dubai in April 2021 and threatened with deportation to China – which he narrowly avoided when his story became international news. Wang and his fiancée travelled through several countries before they eventually claimed asylum in the Netherlands, but not before China had cancelled their passports.
“We are in the Netherlands, but they also have many, many ways to find us,” Wang said, alleging that even with a Dutch phone number he continues to receive threatening text messages and phone calls.
Wang’s story may sound dramatic, but it is far from extraordinary in Xi Jinping’s China, according to human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders, which released a new report on Tuesday on the country’s widespread practice of “involuntary returns”. Such pressure has been used on more than 10,000 alleged Chinese “fugitives” who since 2014 have been coerced into returning from abroad to face detention or prosecution for alleged corruption and other crimes, the report said citing official data.
Methods to “encourage” return can vary from harassment and coercion of friends and family online, to approaching a citizen overseas through Chinese or domestic security agents, and more “irregular” methods like state-sponsored kidnapping, Safeguard Defenders said. In some cases, authorities may freeze family assets or even threaten to remove children from families.
Kidnappings typically occur in countries with a strong relationship with China, like Thailand or Myanmar, but Safeguard Defenders said as many as 10 people may have been kidnapped from among Australia’s large Chinese diaspora in recent years.
The list also includes the 2015 disappearance of five staff members associated with a Hong Kong book store specialising in books banned in China. One bookseller, Gui Minhai, disappeared in Thailand while the others went missing on trips to China, only to later emerge in Chinese detention
China has also made use of Interpol “red notices“, which flag a citizen to police and immigration departments around the world so they can be deported back home, where they face a 99 percent conviction rate if prosecuted, the watchdog said.
“Involuntary returns” have become increasingly common since China first launched an ambitious anti-corruption campaign in 2012, followed by Operation Foxhunt in 2014 to repatriate Communist Party officials facing corruption charges who have fled abroad, and the broader Operation Sky Net in 2015 to target money laundering.
While nominally law-enforcement based, Operation Foxhunt has been described as a “campaign to enforce political loyalty, avoid in-Party factionalism and to more generally instil Party discipline”, Safeguard Defenders said in the report.
Both campaigns have corresponded to a 700 percent jump in Chinese people seeking asylum abroad between 2012 and 2020 as China’s already limited civil and political rights have been curtailed even further under President Xi, the rights group said.
That number does not include the 88,000 Hong Kong people who applied to resettle in the UK in 2021 under a new immigration scheme, after the imposition of a national security law for the Chinese territory that Amnesty says has “decimated” freedoms and rights that Beijing had promised to respect until at least 2047.
More than 175,000 people have been officially recognised as refugees, but that has not kept Chinese authorities from orchestrating “involuntary returns” whether they are government defectors, Falun Gong practitioners, human rights defenders, political dissidents, or even ordinary citizens like Wang who have fallen afoul of increasingly strict authorities.
Wang says he was just doing what millions of other people do everyday — sharing his views on social media.
“We didn’t do anything against China,” he said. “I wrote something. I never thought they would (begin to) watch me.”
The government claims to be “engaged in long standing cooperation with the UN human rights mechanisms and the UN Human Rights Council.” On the contrary, in February 2020, soon after taking office, the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa 
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 