HOW AUSTRALIAN FEDERALISAM FAILS VICTIMS OF TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION

Artist @badiucao provided a harrowing account of the various forms of transnational repression he faced from Chinese authorities (or persons suspected to be involved with them) while living in Australia. The link to the piece is here and the whole thing is worth a read: https://t.co/h5KYuIJA3v

Of the many highlights (or, from his perspective as a victim, lowlights) of the piece, one passage stuck out (see screenshot, which you can read for yourselves). Victims of transnational repression are often failed in a lacuna that arises from Australian federalism.

Without making the whole thing too academic, the simple points are these:

- The AFP generally gets it when it comes to transnational repression. But the problem is that its jurisdiction only extend to things like outright foreign interference or espionage, and yet l a lot of the harassment that victims of transnational repression face are things where proving that the harassment was conducted by State-backed parties is difficult can mostly only be investigated as ordinary “everyday” crime like assault, stalking-related offences, blackmail and the like.

- As such, the reporting of and attempts at investigating such incidents would be to state-level police. However (and understandably so), state-level police’s expertise is general crime, and they have little or no understanding of the political nuances around transnational repression issues. They see victims of transnational repression as no different to those who might be targeted due to monetary, family or organised crime disputes.

- The result is that suspected transnational repression incidents often end up going nowhere, because they get treated as mere general crime by people (state-level police) who only know to treat it as such, while those who understand the sensitivities and nuances of these scenarios (AFP) have next to zero jurisdiction over such incidents beyond offering advice to victims on how “best” they can protect themselves in circumstances where no officialdom can do or are capable of doing much about such incidents.

- And in the meantime, victims of transnational repression are rendered helpless, while perpetrators of such repression get to (intentionally or not) get to exploit this gap in Australian federalism and get away scot free.

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