More countries taking repression outside borders —report Published February 4, 2021 4:25pm By PAUL HANDLEY, Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON — The murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey, the US detention of a Russian asylum applicant and the abduction of a China-born Swedish citizen from Thailand all have one thing in common. Dozens of countries are using multiple tools of international law, bilateral pressures, digital media monitoring and harassment and physical threats to pursue exiled dissidents and activists, said the rights group. Freedom House—a mostly US government-funded democracy advocacy group—documents 608 cases of direct and physical "transnational repression" by 31 countries since 2014. "In each incident, the origin country's authorities physically reached an individual living abroad, whether through detention, assault, physical intimidation, unlawful deportation, rendition, or suspected assassination," it said.