Daniel Stanton · uOttawa PDI News · Posted: October 22, 2024 10:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago
Foreign interference, when hostile governments or at least ones with contrary interests interfere with domestic politics, has gotten a lot of attention lately. Election meddling has sparked parliamentary inquiries and legal reforms to tighten our protections and enhance our ability to prosecute cases.
But during the inquiry, many members of diaspora communities in Canada gave their own accounts of foreign interference. Ex-pats from Chinese, Sikh, Iranian, Russian, and Uyghur communities gave heartfelt testimonials on what was happening to them and their communities. These are people who were often either dissidents in their home country or relatives of dissidents being harassed and targeted by these regimes, in what’s called transnational repression (TNR).
This underbelly of foreign interference is little talked about and often poorly understood, sometimes even being dismissed as simply diaspora politics or people bringing local conflicts with them here. But these reactions underscore the scope of this problem and the gaps it exposes in our national security.
Transnational Repression Exposes Weaknesses in Our Security
One of the main reasons transnational oppression has fallen by the wayside as an issue so much is that it’s just a tricky issue, jurisdictionally. If someone from a diaspora community goes to the local police and says they’re receiving vague threats or warnings via text messages from someone in another country, the police are likely, as not, to shrug and say there’s nothing they can do.
This isn’t just simple laziness or reluctance on the part of law enforcement, whether that’s at the level of local police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The reality is that the laws and resources around transnational repression are quite limited. While some of that has been addressed in Bill C-70, it remains the case that for Canadians who are being harassed or targeted by foreign regimes, there are few resources for them to access.
But the jurisdictional issues mirror the risk this threat poses. Transnational repression exists when foreign regimes view our diaspora communities not as Canadians but as members of their own country, our borders and civil protections notwithstanding. When Narendra Modi says “India doesn’t send dossiers… India kills terrorists on their own turf,” this is part of what he’s talking about. Like Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a strong supporter of the Khalistan movement, who was killed in BC but labeled a terrorist by the Indian government in 2020.
The truth is that when transnational repression is allowed to run rampant, unimpeded by any legal consequences or protection for diaspora communities, this is how it ends: people get killed.
Cultural Conflicts That Go Beyond Simple Disagreements
Part of the perception by many that this is simply diaspora politics or local issues coming with immigrants is that many people who are targeted are done so for political or cultural reasons. It’s rarely the case that individual members of these communities are singled out, although that does happen.
These communities tend to be targeted because they’re perceived to pose a symbolic threat more often than a real one. If you look at China for example, they refer to the “five poisons,” which include Hong Kong, the Uyghur population, the democracy movement, Taiwan, and Falun Gong, which they perceive as treacherous or even treasonous elements attempting to exert some kind of authority over their citizens and territory.
And there’s a fundamental insecurity of repression, whether it’s domestic or transnational. Despite claiming diaspora communities living elsewhere as their own, they see these dissenters as getting all their power and support and financing externally. Which, particularly in the case of transnational repression, paints a further target on the host countries. In other words, a threat against a diaspora community is a threat against the country as well, a challenge to domestic sovereignty.
People Need Resources to Support Coming Forward
I spoke at a panel hosted by B’nai Brith in Toronto last year on foreign interference. It was an interesting panel for sure, but the most interesting part of the whole experience for me was the people I spoke with outside the panel: Iranian, Korean, Chinese, and Lebanese people, all sharing stories of being harassed and targeted, and asking me where they can go or what they can do.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of an answer for them. Resources like websites, email addresses, or even phone numbers where they can call in are limited. Plus, many older people or more recent immigrants need resources in their own language, whether that’s Mandarin, Cantonese, or Persian.
All of this is exacerbated by the fact that often the people targeting these diaspora communities are themselves connected to these foreign governments and even intelligence services. Unsurprisingly, if you’re being targeted by these sorts of people from your former country, you might be reluctant to talk to the same kinds of people here.
Time, Effort, and Legislative Change Are Needed
I worked Soviet counterintelligence in the field during my first five years in CSIS. As part of that, I gladly handled walk-ins: people coming in with these kinds of stories. And the truth is, often as not, it wasn’t transnational repression at all but truly some version of local or diaspora politics. It can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, and sift out the real threats from vague innuendo.
But make no mistake, even the intelligence services underestimate how much transnational repression is happening. There are real threats there, and the only way to find them is with time and effort. Without ways for members of these communities to report when this is happening, it’s sure to continue to be underreported and underestimated.
Change needs to happen at the legislative level as well. While the changes in Bill C-70 are encouraging, until prosecutions start happening, there won’t be much disincentive for foreign regimes to meddle with our citizens.
Which is why the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute, or uOttawa PDI, offers education for government employees and industry professionals on how TNR works, how it manifests, and what kinds of risks it can pose. The program includes courses, briefings, and events on TNR subjects, like how female journalists in the West are being targeted by regimes for their reporting, and how China’s public security apparatus has targeted members of the Chinese diaspora overseas.