Washington —
High-level allegations this week that India was involved in the killing of a Sikh leader on Canadian soil are renewing fears that governments worldwide are no longer afraid to cross boundaries to silence dissenting voices.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the unprecedented accusation Monday, telling Canadian lawmakers that his government has "credible allegations" of India’s ties to the June slaying of exiled Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver.
India has rejected the charge as "absurd." But the episode has worried top U.S. officials who are tracking a growing number of cases in which critics are being targeted across nation-state boundaries.
"I won’t speak to that particular report," said Kenneth Wainstein, the Department of Homeland Security’s undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, in response to a question from VOA about Canada’s accusation against India.
"But I will say … we have seen an increase in foreign nation state efforts to repress and persecute people they see as dissidents here in the United States," Wainstein said during an event at a Washington think tank on Tuesday.
"We’re seeing that from the PRC [People’s Republic of China] police stations that are set up here and [are] being used to monitor and harass people that they think are unfriendly to the regime," he said. "We’re seeing in [sic] other countries who are targeting people here in the United States."
U.S. counterintelligence officials, in recent months, have repeatedly sounded the alarm about a growing number of incidents.
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