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Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran have all been blamed for targeting critics and dissidents living in the UK in the past decade, and linked to incidents involving physical assaults, attempted kidnap, stabbings and an acid attack.
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State-threat investigations run by MI5 jumped by 48% in a year, and there have been more than 20 threat-to-life cases relating to Iran since 2022.
This week, arson attacks on properties connected to Keir Starmer in May 2025 were linked to Russia. Two men were also jailed on Thursday for surveilling Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners living in the UK on behalf of China through a “shadow policing” operation.
Suddenly, say parliamentarians and lawyers, the UK has become a “hunting ground for authoritarian regimes”.
From a topic consigned to spy novels, such state-targeting is becoming commonplace, leaving large numbers of individuals who had sought sanctuary in the UK in fear of their lives.
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The UK overhauled its legislation with the 2023 National Security Act, including further offences around espionage, sabotage and foreign interference, but it still lacks a clear strategy for dealing with the problem, says Lord Alton, chair of the Joint Committee of Human Rights (JCHR). There is also no accurate data on the number of attacks taking place.
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Roshaan Khattak, an exiled Pakistani activist and former researcher at Cambridge University, says he has faced intimidation and threats he believes have come from Pakistani-linked state actors as a result of his advocacy on highlighting human rights abuses in Balochistan, a region in south-west Pakistan that has sought independence for decades.
In November 2025, Khattak says he received a message on Instagram saying, “we had warned you to stop criticising us on international platforms” and “stop playing into hands of enemies or else you will be killed no matter where you are”.
The message also included details of Pakistan mobile numbers belonging to him and his father, and his Pakistan passport and ID card. “Where are you going to run?” the message on Instagram said. “Don’t forget even Cambridge and UK is not safe,” it added. “Don’t be stupid.”
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Alicia Kearns, Conservative MP and former chair of the foreign affairs committee, accuses the Labour government of “rewarding one of the states most responsible” for the issue by granting the Chinese Communist party, a new embassy in London “despite their illegal campaign of repression” on Hongkongers in the UK.
As well as this week’s China spy case, in the past Hong Kong protesters have also allegedly been attacked in the UK by Chinese activists.
“Hostile dictatorships are increasingly seeking to impose their own repression on British shores. There is no acceptable level of transnational repression. Every individual, organisation – and ultimately state – responsible, must be held to account,” says Kearns.
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