Police Warn Against Foreign Forces Colluding with Gangs for Transnational Repression

Taiwan has faced increasingly diversified national security threats in recent years. Beyond traditional military intimidation and gray-zone tactics, transnational repression and the infiltration of foreign forces have also become focal points of intense concern for law enforcement agencies. The Criminal Investigation Bureau officially issued a warning today, emphasizing that in order to prevent acts of transnational repression, the police will never tolerate any foreign forces engaging in illegal surveillance, intimidation, and various types of violent crimes on Taiwanese soil through domestic credit investigation agencies, gang organizations, or other local collaborators. Law enforcement authorities will uphold a firm stance to crack down on such activities with full force, while also urging the public to heighten their vigilance and avoid becoming local collaborators of foreign forces for short-term gains, thereby jointly safeguarding domestic the rule of law and social order.

In the fields of international security and human rights research, so-called transnational repression generally refers to a state using its intelligence, law enforcement, or proxy networks to cross borders and harass, threaten, monitor, intimidate, or even kidnap and launch violent attacks against specific individuals located in other countries or regions. These targeted individuals often include dissidents, human rights defenders, exiled scholars, ethnic minorities, or expatriates who have publicly criticized specific regimes. With the popularization of globalization and digital communications, the methods of transnational repression are no longer limited to traditional physical shadowing; they also combine cyberattacks, digital threats, collective intimidation of family and friends, and the use of local legitimate commercial entities as cover to carry out illegal missions. Consequently, victims continue to feel a pervasive sense of insecurity even while residing in democratic and free environments.

In practical operations within Taiwan, foreign forces often do not directly dispatch personnel to execute these gray-zone illegal tasks locally; instead, they seek local proxies through dense underground networks. These local collaborators may include law-breaking credit investigation agencies, gang members lured by money or mobilized by organizations, or other marginalized figures in society recruited through commercial investments or interpersonal networks. Foreign forces frequently use lucrative rewards as bait to commission these local collaborators with gathering whereabouts, conducting daily surveillance, or even directly stepping forward to intimidate specific targets. Such criminal acts not only severely infringe upon the victims' personal safety and privacy rights, but also constitute a substantial erosion of and provocation against Taiwan's social stability and democratic values.

Faced with this new type of transnational criminal threat, Taiwan's law enforcement agencies have gradually established cross-unit prevention and suppression mechanisms in recent years. The police indicated that prosecutors, police, and investigative units will adopt a zero-tolerance attitude toward any individuals or organizations attempting to assist foreign forces in conducting illegal surveillance, violent debt collection, or intimidation and endangerment on Taiwanese soil. Through intelligence sharing, source tracing, and targeted sweeps against gangs and illegal credit investigation agencies, law enforcement departments continue to demonstrate their determination to uphold the rule of law. This is done not only to protect specific individuals from unlawful infringement, but also to ensure that all citizens of Taiwan and expatriates can live and work in a free environment from fear, and to prevent any external forces from extending their reach into Taiwan to disrupt social peace.

Behind the Criminal Investigation Bureau's public appeal this time lies the highlight that preventing transnational repression relies not only on the strong law enforcement of police units, but also requires the joint prevention and heightened rule-of-law awareness of all citizens. Many local collaborators only realize after being arrested that the commission cases they accepted involved the command of foreign forces, or they underestimate the legal severity of participating in transnational illegal surveillance and intimidation. The police once again remind the public to maintain a high degree of skepticism when facing high-reward commissions from unknown sources or unusual requests to shadow specific targets. Citizens must not risk breaking the law for personal gain and commit serious felonies such as criminal intimidation, interference with privacy, or the Organized Crime Prevention Act, so as to avoid becoming accomplices of foreign forces in undermining national security and social order.