Athens, March 13 (IANS) Pakistan’s strategy to silence opposition combines domestic authoritarianism with transnational repression. As the crackdown inside the country intensifies through arrests of journalists, censorship of media, and violent dispersal of protests – the drive to target critics who evade domestic crackdown but remain vocal abroad has also escalated, a report has highlighted.
According to a report in the ‘Greek City Times’, Pakistan’s partners in Europe and North America face a dual challenge: not only pressing Islamabad for domestic reforms, but also strengthening their own systems of law enforcement, asylum, and diplomacy, to avoid being drawn into this global campaign to silence dissent.
“Pakistan’s human rights crisis no longer stops at its borders, but critics who flee to Europe, North America, or the Middle East increasingly find that intimidation, legal harassment, and threats travel with them. International watchdogs and diaspora advocates now identify Pakistan as one of the well-known transnational repression, using security agencies, cybercrime laws, and diplomatic channels to extend domestic censorship into exile communities,” the report detailed.
“This strategy targets journalists, human‑rights defenders, Baloch and Pashtun activists, and supporters of opposition parties, signalling that speaking out against the Pakistani state carries risks even thousands of kilometres away,” it added.
The report emphasised that transnational repression describes a pattern in which governments employ threats, surveillance, legal tools, and in some cases violence to silence critics abroad — often using tactics such as family harassment, abuse of Interpol, rendition attempts, and extraterritorial attacks.
“Freedom House and US government assessments have explicitly listed Pakistan among roughly two dozen states deploying such tactics. For Pakistan, this approach is an extension of a long‑standing domestic practice of enforced disappearances of Baloch and Pashtun activists, mass arrests of opposition supporters, and prosecutions of journalists under anti‑terror or cybercrime laws,” it mentioned.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has exploited Interpol mechanisms as a key institutional tool of transnational repression.
The report highlighted that journalists in exile are central targets of repression, citing press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which noted that in February 2026, an anti‑terrorism court in Islamabad sentenced four Pakistani journalists living in exile to life imprisonment in absentia.
“The court reportedly convicted them on charges of terrorism and incitement, based on their reporting and commentary critical of Pakistan’s security establishment and political leadership. RSF described the verdict as a classic case of transnational repression, noting that even though the journalists are physically outside Pakistan, the sentence exposes them to arrest if they travel and exerts psychological pressure on them and their families. This use of anti‑terror legislation to criminalise journalism turns exile into a form of permanent legal vulnerability,” it noted.
–IANS
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