In August, Australian Federal Police charged a Chinese national and Australian permanent resident with reckless foreign interference for allegedly working covertly on behalf of China’s Public Security Bureau to gather information on a Canberra Buddhist association.
The case is the third brought under the Espionage and Foreign Interference (EFI) Law passed in 2018, and the first to address transnational repression – the widespread, and growing phenomenon of governments reaching across borders to silence dissent among exile and diaspora communities.
Australia’s response to the issue of transnational repression has been to place it within the broader category of “foreign interference” – covering an array of national security threats from election meddling and covert lobbying to technology theft. But affected diaspora members we’ve interviewed expressed frustration with the official focus on national security, as it could overshadow the effects on the basic rights of targeted individuals and the inconsistent handling of reported incidents through the country’s National Security Hotline.
Freedom House manages a global database of incidents of transnational repression and has produced numerous studies on how different host countries address the issue. Freedom House this month released a report, More Action Needed to Ensure Safety: Combating Transnational Repression in Australia, which draws on interviews with affected diaspora members to assess the policies adopted by the Australian government to combat transnational repression and proposes recommendations to bolster its approach.
Australian authorities are aware of the extraterritorial targeting of exiles on their soil. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has referred to these threats facing exiled activists as a form of foreign interference in annual reports dating back to the 1990s. Likewise, the Home Affairs Department and federal police have produced public material in different languages that acknowledges common tactics of transnational repression and how they degrade the country’s social cohesion.
To complement this awareness-raising campaign, Home Affairs guides cross-governmental efforts to counter foreign interference through its National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator. The Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, composed of ASIO and AFP officials, works to disrupt and prosecute acts, including the August case in Canberra and bounty letters targeting Australia-based Hong Kong figures.
Australia has largely refrained from using unilateral sanctions, visa bans, and other accountability measures for perpetrators.
Yet this consideration of transnational repression as a type of foreign interference has drawbacks. Placing policy responses to this problem in the same bucket as espionage and national security concerns may lead investigators to view diaspora members as threat vectors themselves. And officials risk overlooking the human rights impacts of these extraterritorial plots directed against diaspora members when they frame responses as a matter of national security.
The securitised approach limits the efficacy of engagement with diaspora communities. The Australian government deserves credit for conducting outreach to immigrant civil society organisations through community liaison teams stationed in population centers. However, counter-interference liaisons must also monitor espionage and sabotage at universities, businesses, and other sectors vulnerable to foreign interference operations. Fewer resources remain for programming related directly to transnational repression.
Individuals we interviewed for the report also expressed concern that state and local law enforcement are less attuned to the state-backed intimidation and harassment faced by immigrant communities. This lack of training means frontline responders often struggle to identify everyday, non-physical forms of transnational repression, such as online surveillance or the coercion of the targeted individual’s family members back in their countries of origin. In other cases, lower-level police and security officers often fail to provide updates on investigations.
Australia’s legislative framework for addressing transnational repression is also in need of reform and review. Australia’s Independent National Security Legislation Monitor is presently holding an inquiry into the Espionage and Foreign Interference Act 2018. The law’s proponents argued it sought to protect Australia’s diaspora communities from coercion by foreign powers. However, the EFI Law has so far failed to protect the most vulnerable diaspora communities from the long arm of authoritarian transnational repression.
The case announced in August concerned the alleged gathering of information on Guan Yin Citte, a Buddhist group banned in China, on behalf of PRC intelligence. But acts of direct coercion and even violence against dissidents may not be prosecutable under the law. In May, the inquiry flagged language in the Turnbull-era Act that suggests the offence of foreign interference against the exercise of political rights “does not apply to incidents such as harassment or intimidation of diaspora communities in Australia”.
The Australian government can do more to raise the cost of transnational repression in its foreign policy as well. In recent years, Canberra has endorsed statements released by the UN Human Rights Council and the G7 to address and condemn these practices. Despite these commitments, Australia has largely refrained from using unilateral sanctions, visa bans, and other accountability measures for perpetrators. Civil society observers have argued that Australia’s use of its autonomous sanctions regime “has been limited, delayed, overly-cautious and selective.”
Unlike in the United States, where civil society groups can submit recommendations for individuals to be sanctioned for transnational repression-related activities under the Khashoggi Ban, Australia lacks mechanisms for watchdogs and human rights defenders to formally contribute to the review process. Activists told us that this absence of opportunities for dialogue and unresponsiveness at the ministerial level to requests made by civil society have made it difficult to determine the rationale for sanctions decisions.
In his 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess stressed that the government has “zero tolerance” for foreign governments’ attempts to harm and harass their diaspora populations in Australia. The government has made progress in recognising the problem and establishing structures to blunt the effects of foreign interference.
More work remains to strengthen the response. Training on the array of transnational repression tactics is essential to enable subnational law enforcement to quickly deal with reported incidents. Greater transparency and follow-up related to investigations funnelled through the National Security Hotline, and a human rights-focused contact point providing support and advice to those targeted, would increase the trust of diaspora members in the government’s efforts.
Providing immigrant groups digital security guides and the resources and funding to create their own toolkits would help enhance the resiliency of targeted individuals. Similarly, diplomats and other foreign policy specialists should also consider fielding more input from civil society when making sanctions decisions related to transnational repression.
The issue of transnational repression is gaining traction among democratic governments. The Australian government should seize this opportunity to advance its domestic and foreign policy responses to the problem.
