Worrying trend: Powerful governments kidnapping & murdering opponents abroad - with impunity
China, Russian especially
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-trend-fight
Rarely have the basic rules governing relations between states been so wilfully, blatantly and frequently disregarded.
It’s a problem that should concern everybody – because everybody is at risk.
...
Reagan’s “snatch and grab” operations inaugurated the modern-day practice of state abduction, leading ineluctably to extraordinary rendition.
They set a fateful precedent.
...
When it comes to kidnappings and abductions, Saudi Arabia is minor-league compared to big players such as China and Russia.
Xi Jinping’s regime in Beijing stands accused of a “global kidnapping campaign”,
targeting Chinese nationals living abroad whom it deems political dissidents or security threats.
Many such cases, such as the persecution of Taiwan citizens in mainland China, go largely unreported.
...
“Beijing’s policy of forcibly repatriating people it considers Chinese nationals
– some of whom are in fact citizens of other countries –
appears to be accelerating
“Powerful businessmen, ex-Chinese Communist party officials, dissidents, and activists have all been targeted
as part of what western intelligence officials say appears to be a large-scale campaign.”
Russia’s overseas conspiracies against exiled opponents have a habit of turning lethal.
The attempted poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent
who Vladimir Putin last week denounced as a “scumbag” and “traitor”,
recalled the assassination in London of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
But these scandals are dwarfed, in scale, by Russian actions in occupied Crimea, where there have been dozens of unexplained, unnerving disappearances since 2014.
The growing willingness of states to launch extra-territorial operations is not simply a matter of unscrupulous leaders following the US’s example.
It reflects a more general loss of respect for international law and for the much-battered, much-lamented “global rules-based order”.
It is one, dire manifestation of the many negative consequences of the ongoing collapse of the postwar, collective UN security system,
to which irresponsible populist-nationalists such as Donald Trump are actively contributing.
Khashoggi’s disappearance shows what can happen when the primacy of the law breaks down,
and
far from fighting to restore it, democratically elected leaders and governments connive in, or turn a blind eye to, the dictators and despots who are responsible.
Similarly blatant outrages are occurring every day, and every day go unpunished.