The World Ahead 2022
Autocrats will continue to target dissidents abroad
They know that Western countries have done so, too
BEFORE 2021, few people imagined that a national leader would order the hijacking of a foreign plane in order to capture a dissident. But that is exactly what Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, did last May to silence Roman Protasevich. An outspoken exile can be a special kind of headache for an autocrat, causing all manner of image problems at home and abroad. Silencing them using smear tactics, intimidation and violence, even if it means reaching across borders and breaking laws, also serves to spread fear and disillusionment through the diaspora.
In 2022 there will be more such outrages, and a greater variety of perpetrators. Smaller states will copy larger ones. Mr Lukashenko learned much from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Asia will continue to be at the centre. Iran, which has killed its citizens abroad and kidnapped others, will be in good company when it joins the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The Asian security alliance maintains a shared blacklist of dissidents.
States will continue to use spyware to snoop on their citizens abroad
Another SCO member, India, is the only “free” state to engage in “transnational repression”, according to Freedom House, a think-tank. The world’s largest democracy will probably detain more activists abroad in the run-up to elections in 2022. Nepal, which has long harassed Tibetans and deported them to neighbouring China, may do so more, ahead of its own election.
Hijackings and poisonings grab all the attention. Less obvious is a steady drip of intimidation and harassment, made easy and cheap by technology. With no legal restrictions, export controls or sanctions, states will continue to use spyware to snoop on their citizens abroad, and armies of social-media trolls to smear them. From there it is easy to use that knowledge to intimidate or silence. In recent years, Hungary, Mexico and Morocco have all used Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human-rights activists and ordinary citizens (though Morocco has denied doing so). In 2022, under the right circumstances, they may be tempted to go further.
The urge to repress is strongest at moments of heightened political sensitivity. International sporting events in 2022—the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, the World Cup in Qatar in November—are occasions when hosts will be aware of outside criticism, and anxious to stop it. Hong Kong dissidents abroad will be at most risk of harassment before a new chief executive is selected in March.
Governments will continue to use such methods as long as they think they can get away with it. America’s intelligence community believes that Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, in Turkey in 2018. But he will not be deterred by America’s “Khashoggi ban”, which supposedly slaps sanctions on people implicated in such acts but is unlikely to touch the prince himself.
After September 11th 2001, America and its allies used the global “war on terror” to flout international law prohibiting rendition and torture, and to deny suspected “terrorists” their rights. Regimes around the world believe that gives them the right to do similar things, and worse. A quarter of all the “red notices” issued for fugitives by Interpol, the international policing body, contain the word “terrorist”.
As long as Western democracies condone such bending of the rules, it will be hard to push others to stop. In 2022 they can lead by example, by showing greater respect for international law and better protecting the exiles of repressive regimes.
Georgia Banjo: Foreign affairs correspondent, The Economist■
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Dictators without borders”