Transnational repression has moved from the margins of human rights reporting to the center of Western security debates. According to new data released by Freedom House, 54 governments, more than a quarter of the world’s states, reached across borders to silence exiles and diaspora communities from 2014 to 2025, committing at least 1,375 direct, physical incidents in more than 100 host countries.

Western democracies are finally taking the threat seriously. Governments are adopting formal definitions, have set up interagency working groups, and are opening reporting and support channels for victims. In 2025, the G-7 leaders issued a joint statement on the topic, and the European Parliament adopted a resolution on transnational repression targeting human rights defenders.

Transnational repression has moved from the margins of human rights reporting to the center of Western security debates. According to new data released by Freedom House, 54 governments, more than a quarter of the world’s states, reached across borders to silence exiles and diaspora communities from 2014 to 2025, committing at least 1,375 direct, physical incidents in more than 100 host countries.

Western democracies are finally taking the threat seriously. Governments are adopting formal definitions, have set up interagency working groups, and are opening reporting and support channels for victims. In 2025, the G-7 leaders issued a joint statement on the topic, and the European Parliament adopted a resolution on transnational repression targeting human rights defenders.

Yet the threat that these instruments describe is already changing shape. In a newly published peer-reviewed study, we examined Beijing’s campaign against Uyghur diaspora researchers and activists. We found that the most consequential tool of transnational repression that Beijing directed at the diaspora over the past year came in a deceptively benign form: the visa.

In 2013, the German political scientist Johannes Gerschewski argued that authoritarian stability rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars: repression; co-optation in order to secure loyalty; and legitimation to manufacture broad, popular consent. Political science scholars have long argued that repression alone cannot sustain a regime: It is costly, invites backlash, and fails to produce the enduring compliance that regime stability requires.

We argue that the same logic extends across borders. Regimes that perpetrate transnational repression also practice transnational co-optation, securing acquiescence by offering conditional benefits,........

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