For years, Pakistan’s human-rights crisis was seen as a domestic problem. That is no longer the case.

Today, critics of the Pakistani state are being targeted far beyond the country’s borders — in Europe, North America, and Africa. Journalists, activists, and former officials who believed exile would offer safety have instead found intimidation, violence, and pressure following them abroad. This practice is known as transnational repression (TNR), and Pakistan has become one of its most troubling practitioners.

Transnational repression is not about isolated threats or rogue actors. It is about states extending their coercive power across borders to silence voices they cannot control at home. In Pakistan’s case, this strategy has expanded alongside growing military dominance, legal immunity for top officials, and the erosion of judicial independence.

What follows is a clear picture of how this system works, why it has intensified, and why the international community is now paying closer attention.

A Legal Shift That Enabled Impunity

In November 2025, Pakistan adopted its 27th Constitutional Amendment, a turning point that alarmed legal experts and human-rights groups.

The amendment fundamentally altered the balance of power in the state. It created a Federal Constitutional Court able to override Supreme Court rulings, centralized military authority more firmly under the Army Chief, and granted lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution to the president and senior military leadership.

In plain terms, it placed the most powerful actors in Pakistan above the law.

Legal watchdogs described the amendment as a direct assault on judicial independence. Human-rights organizations warned that insulating military and executive leaders from accountability would make abuses not only more likely, but harder to challenge — both at home and abroad.

Since then, reports of........

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