Closing Canada’s INTERPOL Gap: Preventing Politicized Red Notice Abuse
By Isaac Steinmeyer, University of Helsinki
Executive Summary
Authoritarian states are increasingly using police organizations to target diaspora communities in democratic countries. This is especially evident in the misuse of Interpol’s Red Notice system to bypass extradition barriers and pursue dissidents abroad. When politically motivated notices are dispersed through Canadian policing systems, they risk compromising the integrity of international law enforcement cooperation, increasing the likelihood of refoulement which violates Canada’s legal obligations, and exacerbates a chilling effect among diaspora communities. In doing so, these notices expose the vulnerabilities in Canada’s domestic protections by allowing foreign states the ability to project coercive influence through Canadian political institutions.
While this brief focuses on the misuse of INTERPOL mechanisms as a specific form of Transnational Repression (TR), it sits within a broader context of state-led repression ranging from the People’s Republic of China to India. It uses Tajikistan as a case study to highlight vulnerabilities in INTERPOL’s vetting process, including insufficient pre-screening and the burden placed on victims to prove their innocence. These weaknesses enable states to exploit Canadian institutions to harass and deport political refugees, a practice known as Transnational Repression (TR).
TR has occurred in Canada, demonstrating the urgent need for a governmental response. The focus of this policy brief is on the use of INTERPOL to target dissidents. To address these challenges, this brief proposes specific procedural enhancements to protect the asylum process and strengthen pre-existing domestic protections to protect Canada’s diaspora communities.
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