I'm Aya Shorasko and this is a Sunday story.

People can flee authoritarian regimes, but escaping their grasp, that can be a lot tougher.

In 2018, a former Russian spy and his daughter were found

poisoned on a park bench in England. That same year a prominent Saudi

dissident and Washington Post columnists was

dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. And in 2023 Canada

accused the Indian government of gunning down a Sikh separatist in Vancouver.

Killings like these aren't the norm, but authoritarians are increasingly reaching around the world to threaten and frighten their critics.

Today on the Sunday story, NPR's global democracy correspondent Frank Langfeit brings us a remarkable tale of two such critics who left China and sought asylum in the Netherlands.

Frank and a reporting partner spent months investigating the men's saga.

They thought their reporting would expose the shadowy world in which China targets dissidents overseas.

But the facts led an unexpected and surprising directions.

And the story they found turned out to be about the power of fear itself, and how it can be

used as a weapon, not just by authoritarian regimes, but by just about anybody. Stay with us.

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Christian nationalists want to turn America

into a Theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

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