Talk:Transnational repression

There are two news/articles about Assange's speech and mentioned transnational repression.

1."This came at a cost. Assange recounted the legal attacks ('lawfare'), surveillance, and various illegal CIA plots against him, describing it as a form of transnational repression. "—— Chip Gibbons, Jacobin

2."The PACE resolution said it was 'alarmed' by reports that the CIA was covertly surveying Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and 'allegedly developing plans to poison or even assassinate him on United Kingdom soil'.[PACE] reiterates its condemnation of all forms and practices of transnational repression"—— In the chapter "Transnational repression" Radio France Internationale

Should these information to be added here? Someone insists to delete these with the reason WP:DUE. But I think these should be remained for

1. Assange is name prominent adherent; "Jacobin" and "RFI" are mainstream media; So it is qualified for WP:DUE.

2. The removing of these information is against "does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view; rather, it means including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight.", because none point of these information will be remained.

I want to write these as:

"In Assange's 2024 October speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, he recounted the legal attacks (“lawfare”), surveillance, and various illegal CIA plots against him and described it as a form of transnational repression.^[1] The PACE resolution saided that, it was "alarmed" by reports that the CIA was covertly surveying Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and reiterated its condemnation of all forms and practices of transnational repression.^[2]" diff

--MINQI (talk) 16:52, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

• Comment As I mentioned before it's not enough to know you want to use these citations - can you draft the copy you want in the article? Simonm223 (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for the suggestion. MINQI (talk) 16:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

• Comment (invited by the bot) What we know for a fact is that the US sought to prosecute him, and what was alleged was a clear cut violation of US law. That's not transnational repression. The stuff above looks like "somebody claimed that the US was thinking of trying to do something else" which IMHO is nowhere near a credible reason to classify his treatment as transnational repression. And including such in this article is implicitly a statement that it is. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:06, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for the reply but we cannot analyse the sources' points, positions or meanings(WP:OR). MINQI (talk) 20:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

  You'd have to be a lot more specific on what you believe is prohibited, where you believe it is prohibited(article content vs. talk page) and exactly how you think my point was based on whatever you are concerned about. North8000 (talk) 20:35, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

So the source of the claims of transnational repression, per the Jacobin article, is Assange himself, not PACE nor Jacobin. Jacobin quotes Assange saying that it was this phenomenon and does not venture to say itself "this was this thing." As such while the source might be due mention at Julian Assange I don't think this is due inclusion here as constructed. Simonm223 (talk) 20:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose -- if the only source is Assange himself, given it seems to be wrong (attempting to prosecute people for hacking the government and publishing state secrets in a way that is illegal is not really transnational repression as far as I can tell rather than attempting extradition), it should not be added. Mrfoogles (talk) 04:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

  Have noticed that PACE agreed with him. However, the basis for the transnational repression claims appear to be reports that he may be the subject of surveillance or assassination plans. If those suspicions are included they should be noted as such and attributed. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

  Have noticed that PACE agreed with him, in general terms PACE sympathised with him, expressed concern about some of the reports of assassination having been discussed. They also used the term transnational repression in passing, but they did not refer to his case as 'transnational repression' at any point. Pincrete (talk) 06:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose (Summoned by bot) certainly oppose Assange's own account of his 'travails'. He would present himself as a wholly innocent victim of an overarching global power, wouldn't he?. The PACE text is more problematic IMO, on the one hand this is a serious HR body, on the other hand the 'reports of attempts to assassinate Assange', never seem to have risen above the level of idle speculation from a small number of individuals in the US administration. How the CIA was supposedly "covertly surveying Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy" is not stated. Certainly British authorities and at times the British press were overtly monitoring the Embassy at all times - at enormous expense- because the Embassy housed a notorious bail defaulter. On balance, I don't see this as meaningfully an act of 'transnational repression', nor as being reported as such. PACE itself only uses the term in passing, not to apply it directly to Assange's case. The US itself - and most other major powers - have probably done much more sinister things than 'find out what Assange was up to' and possibly idly speculate about whether it could 'neutralise' him in some way & seemingly, no one, apart from Assange himself, has actually called the US treatment of him 'transnational repression'. Pincrete (talk) 05:25, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose As others have said this is Assange representing himself as a victim, its not new. Moreover, if he breaks the law, he has broken a law (one he in fact pleaded guilty to). MUsh of the rest was (or is) idle speculation. This seems wp:undue. Slatersteven (talk) 13:25, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

• Comment @North8000, Simonm223, Mrfoogles, Pincrete, and Slatersteven:

Firstly, thank you for the replies. Secondly, I will tell my opinion about your replies:

1.Most of you said it's only from Assange.

No, also from Chinese goverment. But because none source from a democratic country（I also found the same news from Russia's agency and Iran's agency）or so-called RS(Dailymail 1; Trtworld 2) and it is deffinited as a propaganda of red China so no information can be added.

2.Some of you said it's from Assange himself and Jacobin, PACE just used his words.

Not only. a. From RFI's news, we cannot get that point —— or we are analyse the sources' points, positions or meanings.

b. If we can not use these news, why we can add the words from Antony Blinken or US goverment? Are these RS not quoted Antony Blinken or US goverment saying? It's a typically double stand.

3.Some of you said it should not be added because he has broken a law.

But according to "does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view; rather, it means including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight.", we really should not make the exclusion of certain points of view. "Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views" and "WP:ALLOWEDBIAS" also point it out.

4.I agree with @Simonm223's "adding more propaganda won't improve this article". But we must describe both points of view and work for balance. So at the same time I really think more propaganda should be added because it's a real subjective political issue. If we just add one seit's propaganda, we not only unintentionally do censors but also make this article a propaganda for that seit. I also do not think "Delete 'Governments accused'-Part just Rremain the theores from academic sources" will be a consensus although I think it's the best way to this article. MINQI (talk) 10:05, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

TherE you have it, we need a lot of RS describing this as "Transnational repression" not synthesis or OR deciding it is. Otherwise, it is wp:undue to include a contentious claim (that is by its very nature BLP content). Slatersteven (talk) 11:04, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Slaversteven. It should not be in there. And I made the main point in my posts above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Ditto others. We weren't asked whether anybody thinks US/UK/the West are hypocritical in wanting to control their own secrets, but expose those of their 'enemies'. Nor whether Assange was treated unjustly. We were asked whether a sufficient number of RS have described the treatment of Assange as 'transnational repression'. They just haven't. A small number have reported Assange saying it is and a fair few have criticised aspects of the way he has been treated - to a greater or lesser extent - and aspects of US actions, but that still doesn't make it a case of transnational repression.Pincrete (talk) 17:09, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support, Assange's claims are notable and supported by the book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution written by Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment that looked at Assange's case in great detail.

Here one of the many excerpts from Melzer's findings that support Assange's statement:

I write this book because, when investigating the case of Julian Assange, I came across compelling evidence of political persecution and gross judicial arbitrariness, as well as of deliberate torture and ill-treatment. But the responsible states refused to cooperate with me in clearing up these allegations, and to initiate the investigative measures required by international law. I visited Julian Assange in prison with a team of medical doctors and spoke to the authorities in charge, as well as to lawyers, witnesses and experts. [...] At the same time, the persecution and mistreatment of Julian Assange intensified, violations of his due process rights became increasingly blatant and my public appeals calling on the authorities to respect human rights were ignored. [...]

When confronted with a request under the Freedom of Information Act on whether the CIA had plans to assassinate Assange, the agency on 27 October 2010 responded evasively that ‘the existence or non-existence’ of such plans could be ‘neither confirmed nor denied’. As so often in the assessment of evidence, it is of crucial importance to ask the right questions. In this case, the right question is not, of course, whether the CIA’s reply explicitly confirmed an assassination plan against Assange (which the agency would never do), but whether the agency would have given the same answer with respect to someone whose assassination had never been considered. Just as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s ‘joke’ response to allegations that she had contemplated ‘droning’ Assange, the absence of a firm denial is more revealing than the verbal content of the reply. In fact, according to an extensive investigative article published by Yahoo News on 26 September 2021, several former officials of the Trump administration confirmed that, after WikiLeaks exposed the CIA’s worldwide hacking operations in the Vault 7 release of March 2017, various options for direct action against Assange were discussed at the highest level of the US government, including his kidnapping, rendition and assassination. These allegations were corroborated by evidence emerging from court proceedings against UC Global in Madrid.

The legal attacks, surveillance and harassment is so well-documented at this point that doubt I even need to cite excerpts on them.

Sarrotrkux (talk) 21:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

No one doubts that many people think that Assange was badly treated by various authorities, by where is tramsnational repression mentioned there? Pincrete (talk) 06:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Exactly - there are three matters here:

1. some of the proposed sources are unreliable. WP:DAILYMAIL, WP:RUSSIATODAY and WP:XINHUA all apply.
2. an appeal has been made to WP:FALSEBALANCE by suggesting the presence of pro-US propaganda should be countered with anti-US propaganda. I would contend, instead, that propagandistic sources should be removed in favour of using WP:BESTSOURCES - preferably from peer reviewed academic publications.
3. without the unreliable sources it becomes WP:SYNTH to describe what happened to Assange as transnational repression specifically. The effective logic of the argument is: RS describes these actions have been taken against Assange > these actions constitute transnational repression > therefore what happened to Assange is transnational repression. The problem arises because reliable sources are not saying the middle part. Simonm223 (talk) 13:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I have added Belarus and Iran and examples under the Governments accused section. Feel free to comment on the changes if you wish. NoonIcarus (talk) 01:00, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

This framing seems to be highly questionable. Bombing a military leader is not assassination. — Red XIV ^(talk) 18:34, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

If your only concern about this material is that it says assassinated instead of killed or something, I suppose I don't have an issue with changing that language. It would be easy enough to say al-Awlaki was killed and his son was assassinated. I think it's worth pointing out that Anwar al-Awlaki's own page clearly states that he was assassinated in the lead. As far as I'm aware, assassination has regularly been used to refer to the al-Awlaki incident in particular. But I really don't care about the semantics here. I trust the reader to make their own judgment. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 10:42, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

One problem I have with this article, and how this topic is framed in general, is the extent to which even the literature we're deriving it from has a systematic bias. If China coughs in the direction of an expatriate it's repression. When the United States risks the life of a president so that it can pursue whistle blowers, well, who's to say that it was even the United States that did it?

Unfortunately I don't have an easy answer to how to fix this problem - frankly putting a see-also to Bias on Wikipedia might be about the only recourse since the problem is that the purportedly reliable sources we're drawing from are themselves laughably non-neutral. But I'd caution editors about being too hasty to hide mention of American repression since the United States is, from a neutral perspective, one of the biggest purveyors of international repression. It just doesn't get called that. Simonm223 (talk) 19:03, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

I would also like to see this problem addressed. It seems that the term transnational repression is the vocabulary phrase of a specific political camp and that the literature which deals with the term "transnational repression" in explicit terms has an unhelpful lack of critical reflection. I think there are a few ways this could be addressed.

1. Write this article based on the definitions of transnational repression given by the sources we use, without regard for whether those sources consistently apply their own definition to all countries. For example, this Columbia Law paper explicitly identifies extraordinary rendition as an aspect of transnational repression. Then, in an extraordinary lack of self awareness it goes on to discuss an attempt by Iran to apprehend an activist in the United States without any mention of US practices overseas. Ideally though, the definition should be enough for us to take an objective look at who is practicing extraordinary rendition and write the article accordingly.

2. Change the focus of the article by renaming it to something like international repression. The mechanism by which this literature on transnational repression is biased is its extremely narrow scope. Only in fringe cases does something like the global war on terror fall into the transnational repression category, but it very clearly falls into the category of international repression. Changing the focus would allow for a better comparative between different but convergent state practices of repression.

3. Downgrade the reliability of Freedom House in this context to that of a pro-US advocacy organization. Reading their page, there is plenty of material that gives me pause as to their reliability. Framing this page as in large part the view of an advocacy org gives us more room to objectively portray disputes about how this term is used. I see that you opposed adding Xinhua's accusations about Assange to the article, but I am not so sure that makes sense. I wouldn't want Xinhua's accusation to be portrayed in Wikivoice, but I think this article might benefit from attributing its claims as well as those of Freedom House.

Interested to hear what you and others think. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Number 3 absolutely should be done. Simonm223 (talk) 11:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

@Nghtcmdr Since you have been edit-warring while calling for the building of consensus at talk it would be wise for you to comment here. Simonm223 (talk) 11:26, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Got it Nghtcmdr (talk) 16:51, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Your 1st recommendation sanctions original research and the 2nd recommendation would require substantiation by reliable sources. I don't know how you want your 3rd recommendation to be implemented, but it would appear that we would need to first establish the unreliability of Freedom House before we can go about discussing that. Nghtcmdr (talk) 16:51, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Simonm223, there is a huge anti-Chinese bias both in terms of coverage and WP:DUEWEIGHT on wikipedia.

Additionally, I agree that freedom house, if not all "Human rights organizations", should have their reliability downgraded due to bias Thehistorianisaac (talk) 01:46, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

While "not us" seems the biggest category in the literature, there are some that point to US perpetration of transnational repression, such as "Political repression and capitalist globalization: A theory of a Transnational Repressive Apparatus" by Vaughn 2008. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:33, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing anyone quick to hide anything just as how I'm not really seeing unreliable sources being used. The drone paragraph stood untouched for three months and the majority of sources used have been judged to be reliable according to the "Reliable sources/perennial sources" list. I do see people demanding that edits adhere to policy, but that is par for the course when editing Wikipedia. Nghtcmdr (talk) 16:51, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Frankly Wikipedia editors rate Freedom House far too highly. It's quite clearly an advocacy group for American foreign interests and, as an advocacy group alone, we should not be making statements sole-sourced from Freedom House in WP voice. So the first edit pass would be to ensure that Freedom House statements were properly attributed. I'm ambivalent about suggestion 1 because, like you, I don't really like WP:SYNTH slipping into articles. However I also see something of a problem in how the current literature is skewed in an Americentric manner that treats repression as something "foreign" "enemies" do rather than something the United States did. As I mentioned above the United States has a well documented history of extrajudicial torture, international rendition, interference with elections, regime change, and genocide against its perceived rivals and all of these things are transnational repression according to the definitions we have to use. The framing of an article so that it applies to enemies of the United States but not to the United States is a neutrality concern which we should take seriously and address.

Renaming and refocusing the article such that a more neutral set of reliable sources can be used is one possible solution and, as such, I'd suggest that the 2nd recommendation, while the most labour intensive, is likely the best way forward while keeping in line with Wikipedia policies. However, as a quick patch, the third suggestion absolutely should be implemented. Simonm223 (talk) 17:05, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Articles are written based on what the sources say and not what they are interpreted by editors to say. People may not like what the sources say, but that really isn't a reason to ignore policy in order to bend an article towards their vision of what they want it to say. As with my comments to Monk of Monk Hall, your 2nd recommendation will require substantiation by reliable sources and your 3rd one will first need to establish the unreliability of Freedom House. Nghtcmdr (talk) 18:48, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

They are an advocacy group. We should not be using their claims in Wiki voice. Simonm223 (talk) 18:52, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

We don't. Nghtcmdr (talk) 03:43, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

I think there are two ways to think about policy here as regards the scope of the subject matter on this page.

One interpretation is that we can only write about incidences which are identified by the author of a paper or other resource by name as a case of transnational repression.

The other interpretation is that these same reliable sources set out a definition (or a set of definitions) as to what transnational repression is. If something like extraordinary rendition or overseas assassination is defined as being one mode of transnational repression, then any instance of those behaviors might be due for a mention in this article, regardless of whether an author uses the words in the title to describe it.

I think these are both valid interpretations of policy. But we should ultimately base our interpretation of policy on what is best for the encyclopedia and its goals in a holistic sense, and I don't think it's beneficial to have a page that is biased and gives a slanted view of an important topic because the criteria for inclusion rests too narrowly on the words used in its title. If this page is to be taken as a serious description of an important concept and not a polemical attack article that slants its scope by laundering advocacy through the vocabulary words of a particular political camp, we'll need a broader interpretation of the concept at hand here. Whether that means changing the article title or just thinking differently about the criteria for including content here, I'm not sure, but it doesn't make sense to just remove material that improves the comparative quality of the content on this page over a semantic issue. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 03:49, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

As I said before, your "other interpretation" is problematic as it sanctions original research. You may not like what the sources on this topic say, but that isn't a reason to ignore policy in order to bend the article towards your vision of what you want it to say. Nghtcmdr (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

@Nghtcmdr

How is this original research? Also, you should not falsely accuse people of "ignoring policy", as that could be interpreted as a lack of assuming good faith. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 23:34, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

@Thehistorianisaac It's original research because the term transnational repression doesn't appear in the sources that the other editor is using for the material that they are trying to put into the article. Nghtcmdr (talk) 23:50, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Original research DOES NOT APPLY to the talk page. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 23:53, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

No one is saying that it does. WP:OR has always been about the article's content, not discussion about said content on the talk page. - Amigao (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2025 (UTC)