Transnational Repression: Gendered Repression and the Weaponization of Shame — Part II

Part II begins by mapping the deniable infrastructure that enables repression at scale, before turning to gendered tactics that weaponize shame and sexuality.

Digital Proxy Violence

Concept: Digital proxy violence refers to the phenomenon where states use third-party actors in cyberspace – such as patriotic hackers, aligned hacktivist groups, or online mobs – to carry out cyber attacks and harassment, thereby obscuring the state’s direct role. Unlike official cyber operations (which might be attributable to state agencies), these proxies operate in a deniable space. They deliver what is effectively violence (in terms of psychological harm and reputation damage) through digital means, acting as the regime’s unseen hand online.

Manifestations: One form is the use of “troll armies” or bot networks that swarm an exile’s social media with threats and abuse. Many authoritarian regimes have nurtured online communities loyal to them who can be activated for such campaigns. For instance, women activists from various countries recount that as soon as they speak critically online, they are deluged with misogynistic attacks from accounts that often appear coordinated (Citizen Lab, 2024). These accounts sometimes amplify each other and use similar talking points, hinting at a central orchestrator. Yet they often cannot be traced back to an official source – they appear as ordinary nationalists or random internet users, giving the state plausible deniability.

Cyber-mercenaries are another type of proxy. There are cases where states have hired private companies or foreign hackers to compromise a target’s email or spread malware. For example, reports have detailed how the Ethiopian government (under the previous regime) hired foreign commercial spyware to target Ethiopian dissidents in the U.S. and Europe (Marczak et al., 2015, Citizen Lab). If exposed, the government could claim ignorance, blaming a contractor. Similarly, Venezuela reportedly contracted a pro-regime hacker collective to take down opposition media sites abroad – if confronted, officials dismiss it as the work of zealots beyond state control (Secure Free Society, 2022).

Inauthentic local groups: Digital proxies can also be fake personas or front media spreading disinformation about exiles. A recent example involves Chinese state-linked actors creating fake news sites and personas on Western social media that accused exiled Hong Kong activists of various scandals, all to discredit them. These personas, once unmasked by social media companies, were found to be coordinated from within China, yet they had masqueraded as independent voices (Graphika & Stanford Internet Observatory reports, 2021).

Advantages for Perpetrators: Digital proxies allow regimes to exploit the open internet of democratic societies as a battlespace against their critics. They are inexpensive – a troll farm of a few dozen people or a one-time purchase of a malware toolkit can do substantial damage. They are highly scalable, as mentioned: one directive can unleash thousands of messages or dozens of phishing attempts. And they rarely trigger strong counter-measures, because they often technically fall under free speech or criminal categories that democracies struggle to address (e.g., sending hateful messages is usually not a diplomatic incident, it’s an online harassment issue; hacking might be a crime but attributing it across borders for prosecution is tough).

Case Study – Hong Kong Disinformation (2025): The Hong Kong exile case encapsulates digital proxy violence with a gendered twist. The likely perpetrators – pro-Beijing groups abroad – produced deepfake pornographic images of a female activist (Lau) and defamatory flyers about a male activist’s wife (Hui’s wife), and distributed them locally in foreign countries. The Hong Kong or Chinese authorities did not need to publicly engage; instead, shadowy groups (possibly Chinese diaspora “loyalists” or agents posing as such) executed the harassment. The digital manipulation (deepfakes) and analog distribution (letters, posters) combination made attribution difficult. The activists themselves suspect the involvement of “Beijing loyalist groups” tied to the Hong Kong government, and indeed Australian police traced some of the offending emails back to Hong Kong, but officially the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities simply ignored inquiries. This illustrates how a state can weaponize private individuals or cut-outs to do things like character assassination, leaving the victims to deal with law enforcement in their host country (which may treat it as an isolated harassment case rather than part of a geopolitical repression campaign).

Implications: Digital proxy violence contributes significantly to the climate of fear in exile. Targets often cannot definitively prove a state is behind the abuse they receive, yet they strongly feel its systematic nature. This uncertainty can be psychologically taxing – it’s one thing to get random hate mail, another to suspect it’s orchestrated by a government’s security apparatus. Moreover, it complicates the response: tech companies and host governments are often hesitant to attribute harassment to states without concrete evidence, which might never surface due to the cut-outs used.

Diaspora Co-optation

Concept: Diaspora co-optation refers to strategies by which authoritarian regimes infiltrate, recruit, or manipulate diaspora communities to serve as extensions of the regime’s surveillance and control network. Instead of treating all expatriates as enemies, regimes selectively enlist some as allies – whether out of loyalty, fear, or opportunism – to monitor others or enforce obedience. This can involve recruiting informants, leveraging ethnic/cultural organizations, or imposing social pressure within the community to ostracize dissidents.

Methods: One method is through diaspora associations – cultural clubs, hometown societies, student unions, religious centers – where regime-aligned leadership can keep tabs on members and report any anti-regime activities. For example, Chinese embassies have been known to maintain close relationships with Chinese student associations abroad, at times instructing them to protest events featuring regime critics or to send lists of attendees who participate in politically sensitive gatherings (Brady, 2017). Similarly, the Eritrean government has co-opted parts of its diaspora through a “2% tax” system and community organizations that both fund the regime and intimidate Eritreans abroad (forcing them to comply or else relatives at home suffer). Eritrean dissidents in Europe have reported that local Eritrean community leaders (who support the regime) harass and assault those who speak against President Isaias Afwerki, effectively acting as regime enforcers on European soil (Hirt & Saleh, 2021).

Another channel is intelligence recruitment of expatriates. Many authoritarian intelligence services take advantage of trips home or family ties to pressure diaspora members into informant roles. A student from an authoritarian country might be approached when they renew a passport back home: officials might implicitly threaten their family or offer incentives (like business favors) if they agree to spy on fellow diaspora members and report dissident activities. The CoE expert brief highlights how states “incite regime loyalists and chauvinist groups in the diaspora” to participate in repression. Turkey’s MİT, for instance, has anecdotally pressured some of the large Turkish diaspora in Europe to report on supporters of exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, contributing to an atmosphere of mistrust in those communities (Kingsley, 2017).

Enforced patriotism is another facet: diaspora co-optation sometimes involves orchestrating loud displays of loyalty that drown out dissident voices. If exiles plan a protest, embassies may mobilize counter-protesters (often via diaspora groups or paid participants) to show support for the regime, thereby intimidating the protesters and conveying that even abroad, one is outnumbered. This was observed with some Iranian and Chinese diaspora protests where pro-regime crowds appeared, sometimes bussed in from out of town, allegedly with consular coordination.

Effects: Diaspora co-optation deeply undermines the solidarity that exiles might otherwise find in their community abroad. It breeds suspicion – activists often do not know whom to trust, aware that some community members may be informants. This can lead to self-censorship in private settings (e.g., avoiding political talk even among co-nationals) and isolation of dissidents from their cultural community, which in turn increases their vulnerability and stress. As the Council of Europe experts noted, those targeted “struggle to obtain help or protection” because it’s subtle or covert and even their own community might not rally around . The Chinese and Iranian examples of families or communities pressuring outspoken women to stay quiet (to avoid bringing shame or trouble) are a mix of internal social conservatism exploited by the regime’s specter of punishment – a co-optation of social norms against the target.

Case Illustration – New Zealand and Others: The reference to New Zealand’s warning about co-opting others to harass dissidents suggests that even in a country with no obvious ties to the origin states, local diaspora individuals can be used. In New Zealand’s case, Chinese, Iranian, or other diaspora members might be leaned on to keep an eye on compatriots. There have been incidents in New Zealand and Canada where community members confronted activists after being nudged by consular officials (e.g., telling a Uyghur-Canadian that holding a protest would upset the local Chinese community and thus he should desist – a soft form of diaspora-enforced censorship).

Deniability: Co-optation is the ultimate deniability tool. If confronted, the regime can sincerely (or cynically) say, “We didn’t ask anyone to do that; these are patriotic citizens acting on their own.” It pushes repression into the private sphere of communities, making it extremely difficult for law enforcement to intervene – because at face value, it can look like community disputes or individual acts not state-directed operations.

Why Invisibility Matters

The emphasis on invisibility is not just to avoid blame; it’s integral to the effectiveness of transnational repression. When dissidents cannot conclusively identify their oppressor, it heightens paranoia and self-policing. A prominent Rwandan exile noted, “We know the government is here with us, but we don’t know exactly where or who,” describing how even unexplained incidents (a break-in, a strange phone call) are assumed to be the regime’s hand, which achieves the desired intimidation even if the regime did nothing overt in that instance. Invisibility also complicates victims’ access to remedies – police might not take action against anonymous threats; immigration authorities might shrug at a non-renewed passport as not their issue. It creates a void of accountability where the perpetrator operates freely.

In summary, through plausible deniability, legal outsourcing, digital proxies, and diaspora co-opting, authoritarian regimes construct a layered smokescreen around their transnational repression activities. This infrastructure of obfuscation is precisely what makes transnational repression a low-cost, high-deniability governance strategy: it minimizes both the immediate resources required (by leveraging others) and the likelihood of international sanction or intervention (by hiding the perpetrator’s identity). The following section will delve into a specific and particularly pernicious aspect of transnational repression that leverages invisibility and societal bias – the use of gendered repression strategies that weaponize sexuality and shame.

Gendered Repression Strategies: Weaponizing Sexuality and Shame

A growing body of evidence indicates that authoritarian regimes tailor their transnational repression tactics not only to the political profile of targets, but also to their gender. Women in exile, in particular, often face gender-specific forms of harassment that exploit misogynistic norms and gendered stereotypes to inflict harm. These strategies—ranging from sexualized disinformation to threats of sexual violence—constitute a gendered sub-current of transnational repression, sometimes termed gender-based digital transnational repression (Citizen Lab, 2024). This section examines how sexuality and shame are weaponized against women (and sometimes against men in gendered ways), drawing on the findings of Citizen Lab’s report “No Escape: The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression” (Aljizawi et al., 2024) and related research by UN experts and scholars.

Gender as a Central Vector of Attack

Citizen Lab’s 2024 study—based on interviews with 85 women human rights defenders in diaspora from 24 origin countries—found that exiled women face all the same digital threats as their male counterparts plus additional, gendered attacks that leverage patriarchal social norms. The attackers (state agents or their proxies) specifically target aspects of women’s identities such as their bodies, morality, and roles in family or society. The tactics identified include: online sexual harassment (unsolicited explicit images, sexual slurs, and degrading commentary on appearance), rape threats and detailed fantasies of sexual violence delivered via messages, circulation of intimate images or deepfakes (real or fabricated sexual content involving the target, meant to humiliate), accusations of promiscuity or “immorality”, and tropes of shaming (e.g. calling a woman a bad mother, a prostitute, or of loose character).

These attacks are not random; they “build on entrenched patriarchal norms around women’s bodies, sexuality, behavior, and notions of family honor” (Aljizawi et al., 2024, p. 4). In many cultures, a woman’s reputation is closely tied to sexual propriety and family honor. Authoritarian actors exploit this by spreading sexualized rumors or fabricated evidence to tarnish the woman’s standing both in the eyes of the host society and, importantly, within her diaspora community and family. The goal is often twofold: (1) to discredit and silence the woman by making her the object of scandal (so her advocacy is dismissed or she withdraws in shame or fear), and (2) to inflict psychological trauma, knowing that such attacks cut deeply on a personal level.

Tactics in Practice

Consider again the case of Carmen Lau, the exiled Hong Kong activist. She was targeted with doctored nude images distributed to her neighbors in the UK. The attack was clearly gendered: a male activist in the same group (Ted Hui) was targeted via his wife’s sexuality – posters presenting his wife as a sex worker – reflecting a patriarchal assumption that humiliating a man’s wife will also humiliate and unsettle the man. Lau aptly described this as “using humiliation as a tool of political punishment,” noting that “sexualized disinformation has long been used to silence women who challenge authoritarian power”. Her observation aligns with global patterns identified by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, who reported that gendered disinformation is often deployed to punish women for speaking out and to deter them from participation in public life (Khan, 2023).

Other examples: Iranian women activists in exile frequently endure campaigns labeling them as “whores” or accusing them of illicit affairs. One high-profile case is Masih Alinejad, a women’s rights activist living in New York: Iranian state media and pro-regime social accounts have falsely portrayed her as having multiple sexual partners, being paid by foreign governments, etc. – narratives intended to degrade her image in a conservative cultural context. She has spoken of receiving videos where regime agents film her family in Iran while making vulgar comments about her (a psychological tactic implying she is watched and her family’s honor is at stake). Similarly, female journalists from countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan who relocate to the West find themselves targeted by online propaganda in their home country claiming they became “immoral Westernized women,” often accompanied by fake photos or leaked personal pictures (if available). This not only aims to silence the woman but also to isolate her by triggering backlash from her own community or family who may feel shamed.

Weaponizing Social Norms: What makes these tactics effective is the sad reality that patriarchal attitudes remain strong in many diaspora communities (and indeed globally). A smear that a male dissident is corrupt or traitorous is damaging, but a smear that a female dissident is sexually impure or a bad wife/mother can be socially ruinous in certain cultures. The Citizen Lab report noted that women targets often experienced stigmatization and social isolation as a result of such rumors. Some felt compelled to withdraw from activism or public view to salvage personal relationships. Women interviewees said the harassment led to “professional setbacks, stigmatization, and social isolation” as well as “profound emotional distress and psychological trauma”. Several did not even share their experiences with their own partners or families, out of fear of causing them distress or being disbelieved. This self-silencing is precisely what perpetrators intend: the shame and fear induced by the attacks cause women to censor themselves more harshly than any external censor might.

Gender-Differentiated Harassment of Men

While women are particularly targeted for gender-based smears, men are not entirely exempt from gendered repression – it simply takes different forms. In some cases, regimes have spread claims questioning a male dissident’s masculinity or heteronormativity as a form of slur, especially in conservative societies that stigmatize homosexuality. Citizen Lab’s research found that male exiles were sometimes attacked with accusations of being gay or engaging in sexual misconduct, though less frequently than women were attacked for promiscuity. For example, an Azerbaijani female journalist interviewed noted that while she was smeared as a promiscuous woman, her male peers were often smeared as homosexual (in a homophobic context, that was used to discredit male activists). In another case, Rwandan exiles (both men and women) have faced rumors about their sexual behavior: male critics labeled as rapists or gay (to alienate them from a conservative base), female critics labeled as prostitutes. Thus, regimes adapt sexual shaming to the target’s gender in whichever way will most undermine them socially.

However, the overwhelming evidence suggests women bear the brunt of the most personal and vicious sexualized attacks, reflecting their intersecting vulnerability in patriarchal power dynamics. As Irene Khan (UN SR on FOE) articulated, gendered disinformation is at once an attack on women’s free expression and a form of gender-based violence. It seeks to drive women out of the public sphere (“silence the free expression of women”) by making that space so toxic and dangerous for them that many will retreat for survival.

State Involvement and Power Asymmetry

It is critical to note that while misogyny and sexual harassment exist organically online, what makes this a facet of transnational repression is state involvement or instigation. Citizen Lab’s report emphasizes that state or state-affiliated actors build on societal misogyny “with a distinct political purpose: to silence criticism and dissent beyond their borders”. The backing of a state gives these attacks greater intensity and reach. States have the resources to coordinate campaigns – e.g., amplifying a smear via state media outlets, or mobilizing hundreds of troll accounts simultaneously. They also can act on threats in ways random harassers cannot: a point made was that exiled women know a threat from a regime loyalist carries the possibility of offline action, like harm to family or use of spies/chauvinist groups to physically stalk or assault them. Indeed, the report recounts cases where after online threats, exiled women’s families in the origin country were harassed or detained – showing an online-offline linkage in gendered repression.

Additionally, state actors often enjoy impunity which emboldens them. Unlike a random internet harasser who might be sued or banned from a platform, agents of a state might be immune from civil proceedings (if identified) or protected by diplomatic cover. This power asymmetry – an individual woman versus a nation-state – amplifies the chilling effect. It’s not just “online trolls” she faces, but a government’s concerted effort, which can be psychologically overwhelming. Interviewees described “invasive surveillance” combined with defamation that severely impacted their mental health and careers.

Intersectional and Context-Specific Factors

Gendered repression does not act in isolation; it intersects with other aspects of identity. Exiled women who are also from ethnic or religious minorities, or from conservative refugee communities, may suffer compounded effects. For instance, a Muslim woman activist might be targeted with attacks focusing on both her gender and her faith (e.g., accusing her of violating religious morals by her activism). Citizen Lab noted that women’s race, ethnicity, immigration status, and class in the host country can influence their vulnerability. Women from marginalized backgrounds might lack robust support networks to help them cope or fight back, leaving them more exposed to isolation as a result of shame. In diaspora communities with restrictive views on women’s public roles, a smear campaign can latch onto existing prejudices and effectively cut a woman off from her community’s support.

An example intersection is of LGBTQ+ exiles: Citizen Lab included trans and non-binary individuals in “women human rights defenders”. They likely face unique abuse combining transphobic or homophobic slurs with the standard political intimidation. While the report’s focus was broadly on those who identify as women, it acknowledged that gender-diverse individuals in exile also endure this weaponized gendered repression, tailored to the particular stigmas around their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Consequences and Coping

The consequences of gendered repression extend beyond the individual to the cause they champion. When a woman journalist or activist is discredited via sexual smears, her work can lose credibility among her audience, or her outlet might distance itself to avoid controversy. For example, women Persian-language journalists have reported their viewership in Iran is split by smear campaigns suggesting they are involved in scandals, thereby undermining their reporting’s impact. It also deters other women from stepping into activism—witnessing such attacks, many potential women leaders or spokespeople self-select out, unwilling to pay that price.

Coping with these attacks often requires special resources: digital security to counter hacking/doxing, psycho-social support to handle trauma, and sometimes culturally sensitive counseling because issues of honor and shame are involved. Citizen Lab’s findings call for responses that are intersectional, meaning they address both gender-based violence and transnational repression together. They argue that support mechanisms for exiles need to be attuned to the gender dimension—for instance, safe reporting channels for women who experience sexual extortion attempts, or networks of solidarity among women in diaspora to push back against shaming tactics.

The United Nations and civil society have started to recognize this nexus. In 2022, the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on violence against women journalists acknowledged online attacks and gendered disinformation as major threats to press freedom. The Media Freedom Coalition (a group of states) released a statement in 2023 specifically decrying transnational repression of journalists, with a mention of the disproportionate impact on women (Media Freedom Coalition, 2023). These are initial normative steps, but much more is needed to address the gendered strategies systematically.

Conclusion of Gendered Repression

Gendered transnational repression exemplifies how perpetrator invisibility and social prejudices combine to potent effect. The sexualized defamation of women relies on the invisibility of the real perpetrator (it often comes via anonymous accounts or untraceable content) and on credibility bestowed by societal bias (some in the community are quick to believe or at least are scandalized by the insinuations). It is a low-cost method (a photoshopped image, a rumor) with potentially devastating consequences for the target. Recognizing these patterns is crucial for protecting those most at-risk and ensuring that exile does not become an extension of the same gender oppression many women activists fought at home.

Having explored this specialized facet of transnational repression, the paper now moves to a comparative analysis of case studies. The following section will illustrate, through specific cross-border repression cases, how the various mechanisms described manifest in different contexts – and how they collectively contribute to broader civic harms and the erosion of democratic norms internationally.

This concludes Part II. Part III turns from mechanisms to empirical comparison, tracing how different regimes operationalize transnational repression across contexts—through sexualized disinformation, civil death and document weaponization, and sustained targeting of exiled journalists and scholars—to clarify both shared patterns and local variations.
Next: Part III — Comparative Case Analysis: Illustrating Mechanisms Across Contexts