London, July 25 — The United Kingdom has emerged as one of the main centres of Pakistan’s transnational repression, with what began as a campaign targeting Baloch activists now extending to Pakistani journalists, former officials, military defectors and supporters of Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf — living abroad.
Many Pakistani exiles in Britain say they have been subjected to surveillance, intimidation and harassment, with their relatives back home also coming under pressure. Some have been convicted in absentia by Pakistani courts, while others face terrorism or cybercrime cases based largely on speech made overseas.
“British security services have warned Pakistani dissidents that their names were circulating on alleged hit lists. The warnings were not entirely abstract. In 2021, a London-based man was charged with conspiring to murder exiled Pakistani blogger Ahmad Waqass Goraya in the Netherlands, reinforcing suspicions that such lists could be accompanied by attempts to recruit local intermediaries,” a report in 'Parrhesia News' detailed,
“Among the most prominent targets is retired Major Adil Raja, a former Pakistan Army officer who became an outspoken critic of the military establishment and its role in the removal and persecution of Imran Khan. Raja represents a particular kind of danger. He is not simply a dissident. He is a former insider,” it mentioned.
According to the report, the pressure extended beyond diplomatic correspondence. It alleged that on Christmas Eve 2025, men tried to force their way into Raja's home in Chesham, while another group targeted Shahzad Akbar, former advisor to Imran Khan, at his home in Cambridgeshire.
British prosecutors said that these incidents were part of a “coordinated and sophisticated conspiracy”.
The report noted that several exiled journalists, scholars and commentators have been subjected to similar treatment by the Pakistani authorities. These included arrest warrants, convictions in absentia, cancelled identity documents and public warnings to overseas critics that they would be brought back to Pakistan.
“The message is not restricted to those formally accused. It is addressed to the entire diaspora. The state wants to recreate abroad the atmosphere it has created at home: uncertainty over which statement may produce a case, which relative may receive a visit, which passport may be cancelled and which accusation may convert a journalist into a terrorist. This is transnational repression in its modern form,” the report stated, highlighting Pakistan’s campaign of transnational repression aimed at silencing critics abroad.
“It does not always require kidnapping or assassination. It can be carried out through courts, immigration systems, consular documents, counterterrorism cooperation and extradition requests. The methods appear legal because they use legal instruments. Their purpose remains political,” it added.
Asserting that Pakistan has become particularly skilled at the bureaucratic laundering of repression, the report said the process follows a familiar pattern: a political opponent is labelled anti-state, anti-state activity is recast as incitement, and incitement is ultimately treated as terrorism
“Terrorism produces an arrest warrant. The arrest warrant becomes an international request. By the time the matter reaches a European court, the original political conflict has been repackaged as neutral criminal procedure,” it noted.