Silenced abroad, silenced here

Transnational repression – the practice of silencing dissent across borders – is emerging as one of Southeast Asia (Opens in new window)’s most troubling human rights challenges. By targeting journalists, activists, and political exiles beyond national frontiers, governments are weakening a critical safeguard against mass atrocities: independent voices capable of raising the alarm when abuses occur.

The methods (Opens in new window) are diverse. Governments misuse deportation orders, extradition requests, and Interpol notices to pursue critics abroad. Some governments resort to more direct tactics, including abductions, enforced disappearances, assassinations, and surveillance of exiled activists. Increasingly, repression is also digital (Opens in new window). Activists are hacked, doxxed, and targeted through coordinated disinformation campaigns. Some are stripped of passports or consular protection, while others are monitored through intermediaries that blur the line between state and non-state actors.

In Southeast Asia, the pattern is now unmistakable. Vietnamese journalist Truong Duy Nhat (Opens in new window) disappeared in Bangkok in 2019 before surfacing in a Hanoi courtroom. Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsakit (Opens in new window) was abducted in Phnom Penh the following year and has never been found. In 2024, Cambodian government critic Nuon Toeun (Opens in new window) was detained in Malaysia and deported to Cambodia, where she was imprisoned over social media posts. Months later, six Cambodian human rights defenders (Opens in new window) were forcibly returned from Thailand. In early 2025, former Cambodian opposition lawmaker Lim Kimya (Opens in new window) was shot dead in Bangkok. In another widely condemned case, 40 Uyghur detainees in Thailand (Opens in new window) were deported to China despite longstanding concerns about persecution. Together, these cases reveal a region where political refuge is becoming fragile, conditional, and reversible.

Human rights organisations have described parts of Southeast Asia as a regional “swap mart” (Opens in new window) in which governments facilitate, tolerate, or ignore the transfer of political dissidents across borders. This dynamic is particularly visible in the greater Mekong sub-region. Thailand (Opens in new window) has at times become a transit point (Opens in new window) for forced returns. Vietnam employs cross-border surveillance and intimidation against critics abroad. Cambodia has targeted opposition figures and labour activists through surveillance and passport controls. Laos and Myanmar have relied on more coercive methods, including enforced disappearances and cross-border pursuit of dissidents.

Elsewhere, the methods differ but the trend is similar. Malaysia (Opens in new window) has faced criticism for deportations (Opens in new window) that bypass judicial safeguards. Indonesia has been scrutinised for digital surveillance (Opens in new window) and state-linked online harassment targeting activists. The Philippines has extended “red-tagging (Opens in new window)” practices into diaspora communities overseas. Across the region (Opens in new window), borders are increasingly serving not as barriers to repression but as channels through which it travels.

The implications extend beyond individual victims. Mass atrocities rarely occur without warning. They are often preceded by the gradual dismantling of accountability networks: journalists, civil society organisations, and human rights defenders who document abuses and alert the international community. Transnational repression directly targets this infrastructure, when exiled activists can no longer speak freely, governments face less scrutiny, and the world loses a vital source of early warning.

Transnational repression increasingly reaches Australian shores (Opens in new window). Diaspora communities, including Uyghur, Tibetan, Chinese, Hong Kong, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Iranian, and Eritrean Australians, have reported intimidation, surveillance, and online harassment linked to foreign governments.

In some cases, pressure is exerted through family members who remain in the country of origin. When people in Melbourne or Sydney (Opens in new window) self-censor because they face repercussions for relatives abroad, transnational repression becomes not only a human rights concern but also a challenge to Australia’s democratic openness and sovereignty.

Australia therefore has both a principled and a practical interest in addressing transnational repression. Through the ASEAN-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (Opens in new window), Australia and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) already cooperate (Opens in new window) on issues ranging from trafficking to disability rights and institutional capacity-building (Opens in new window).

During my tenure as Indonesia’s Representative to AICHR (2019–24), I advocated for the institutionalisation of an Australia–AICHR policy dialogue on human rights. The rationale is straightforward: while existing cooperation is valuable, it remains fragmented and often project-based. Emerging challenges such as transnational repression require a more structured and sustained policy conversation.

That proposal is even more relevant today following the appointment of Mark Dreyfus as Australia’s Special Envoy for International Human Rights. His position provides an opportunity to elevate human rights diplomacy within Australia’s regional engagement and to create a regular forum for discussing issues that affect both Australia and Southeast Asia.

A regular Australia–AICHR dialogue could bring together regional governments, national human rights institutions, civil society organisations, and the Special Envoy to address shared concerns, including transnational repression, online scam trafficking, refugee protection, freedom of expression, the death penalty, atrocity prevention, and business and human rights.

Such a dialogue would not be about Australia lecturing Southeast Asia, nor Southeast Asia seeking external solutions to regional problems. Rather, it would recognise a simple reality: many contemporary human rights challenges are increasingly transnational and require cooperative response.

Protecting human rights defenders, journalists, and activists is not separate from preserving regional stability. It is part of it. When the voices that provide early warning are silenced, accountability weakens, abuses become harder to detect, and the risk of future atrocities increases. For both Australia and Southeast Asia, preventing those outcomes is a shared interest – and a compelling reason to make human rights dialogue a more central part of regional cooperation.