Australia Urged to Sanction Regimes That Engage in ‘State Hostage Taking’

An alleged detention facility in northwestern Xinjiang region, China, on July 19, 2023. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Australia should use the Magnitsky Act to sanction foreign officials involved in detaining Australians as political hostages, a global justice campaigner has urged.

“There’s a lot more state hostage-taking [in] countries like Iran and China and others which are using law enforcement to effectively kidnap people and hold them hostage,” William Browder, the founder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, told a parliamentary inquiry.

“If there’s state hostage-taking, that should be one of the criteria for sanctioning people. The people, the judges, jailers, etc., who take Australians hostage should be subject to Magnitsky sanctions.”

What is the Magnitsky Act?

The Magnitsky Act, named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky—who exposed a US$230 million ($368 million) government corruption scheme before dying in prison—allows countries to impose sanctions on individuals and entities involved in human rights abuses.

First enacted by the U.S. in 2012, the law has since been adopted by 35 Western nations, including Australia in 2021. Since then, Australia has sanctioned 85 foreign persons and 18 entities under the Act.

In 2024, the country imposed financial and travel sanctions on Russian hackers accused of targeting Australian infrastructure.

Browder, who is a also British financier, praised Browder Australia’s use of the Magnitsky Act against cybercriminals, saying it had inspired other countries to follow suit.

“Cyberattack was not something that people were paying attention to in the rest of the world,” he told the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.

“If I’m not mistaken, other countries went along with Australia on those sanctions in relation to malicious cyber activities, and that was a place where Australia has innovated and pushed the ball even further forward.”

However, he stressed that the Magnitsky Act should be used as a tool to free people who were illegally detained from prison.

Call for Global Coordination

He also highlighted a key loophole:

“The main issue right now is that each country has their own national Magnitsky Act, and oftentimes you end up in a situation where a person who’s done something terrible is sanctioned by one or two countries, but not by all the countries that have Magnitsky Acts,” he said.

“So there’s loopholes and opportunities for [those] people.

“Let’s say they can’t travel to Australia, but they can travel to America, or they can’t spend their money in Australia, but they can in Europe.”

To address this issue, Browder advised Australia to collaborate with allies, such as the Five Eyes countries, to coordinate sanctions efforts in the same way they have cooperated on intelligence.

“I think there’s an appetite and interest among lawmakers to do that,” he said.

“And I think that this is … sort of making something more efficient.”