Documenting Requests for Protection and Housing in the Absence of Victim Infrastructure

LuxembourgThe document below is shared as both a contemporaneous record and a reference for others.The text is a letter I am currently using to request protection, safe housing, and referrals from humanitarian and support organizations. It is published here without addressees or correspondence details so that others can see how a pattern of harm can be described when no established victim infrastructure exists.Transnational repression is increasingly referenced in policy, academic, and advocacy spaces, but it was not developed in collaboration with victims and did not emerge from victim needs. As a result, it functions primarily as an analytical and advocacy concept rather than as a pathway to relief. There is no dedicated victim infrastructure attached to it: no intake routes, no housing protocols, no specialized legal pathways, and no coordinated psychosocial or medical support. If such infrastructure existed, victims of both transnational and global repression would already have access to safe housing, informed legal assistance, and appropriate support long before questions of detection tools or specialized medical testing arose.Global repression, understood as a pre-positioned, distributed system that reproduces similar patterns across locations and sectors, is even less recognized. Most people have no conceptual framework for it at all, and there is no infrastructure within which it can currently be addressed. As a result, victims are repeatedly forced to explain their experiences from first principles, often without shared language or institutional recognition.What It Means When Victims Are Forced to Explain “From First PrinciplesWhen we say victims are forced to explain “from first principles,” we mean this:They have to explain everything from the ground up, as if no shared framework, category, or prior knowledge exists.In practical terms, it means the victim cannot rely on any accepted baseline such as:“This type of harm is recognized.”“There is a known pathway for this.”“There are standard indicators for this situation.”Instead, they must start at zero every time.Concretely, explaining from first principles looks like this:The victim must explain what the harm even is, not just that it happened.They must explain why separate incidents are connected rather than random.They must explain why standard explanations do not fit.They must explain why existing systems fail to capture what is happening.They must explain why their request is reasonable in the absence of precedent.All of that happens before they can even ask for help.By contrast, when infrastructure exists, none of this is required. For example:A victim of domestic violence does not have to explain why repeated intimidation is a pattern.A torture survivor does not have to explain why symptoms persist after release.A refugee fleeing a recognized conflict does not have to explain why return is unsafe.Those victims can rely on shared concepts, intake categories, and institutional memory. That is what infrastructure provides.When victims of transnational or global repression are forced to explain from first principles, it is because:There is no shared vocabulary.There is no agreed framing.There is no intake pathway that says “this kind of harm belongs here.”So every interaction becomes an educational exercise instead of a protection process.That is why this matters so much. Explaining from first principles is exhausting, destabilizing, and risky. It increases misclassification, dismissal, and delay. It also shifts the burden of system design onto the victim.Many people experiencing surveillance, coercive control, cross-border pressure, environmental harm, or retaliation fail to obtain help not because nothing is happening, but because they cannot explain what is happening in a way that preserves the pattern. Their experiences are fragmented into isolated incidents, misread as incoherent, or dismissed because the harm does not fit existing categories.The purpose of sharing these documents is to demonstrate a method of explanation: how to describe recurrence rather than isolated events, how to justify why explanation is necessary in the absence of infrastructure, how to distinguish contextual explanation from concrete requests, and how to ask for protection or assistance without asking the reader to adjudicate ultimate truth or causation. This is a transferable skill. While some of these letters arise in the context of asylum, the structure applies equally to whistleblowers, labor retaliation cases, activist harassment, journalism, and other contexts where harm is cumulative and nonstandard.These documents are also shared as a contemporaneous record of escalation: who was notified, what assistance was requested, and whether assistance was provided. The intent of each letter is to obtain help. When assistance is not provided, that outcome itself further documents the gap that currently exists for victims of transnational and global repression.This post is part of an ongoing series. I will be sharing additional letters as I continue to seek assistance and escalate requests to humanitarian, regulatory, oversight, and human rights bodies. Together, these documents show how escalation occurs in practice: how requests move across institutions, how regulatory and oversight bodies are engaged, and how self-advocacy unfolds when no dedicated victim pathway exists. Read collectively, the letters also function as an escalatory map that others can use to understand where to write, how to escalate, and how to document engagement when responses are limited or absent.Contemporaneous letter and Reusable languageThe letter below was sent today to multiple humanitarian and support organizations. Addressee names and identifying correspondence details have been removed so the document can be shared as a reference while protecting the confidentiality of ongoing requests.My name is Tamara Dixon and I am an asylum seeker currently in Luxembourg. I am also a human rights defender and the founder of Global Repression Studies, both as a discipline and as an institute for victim testimony, L’Institut d’études de la répression mondiale. The purpose of this institute is to collect and archive the testimony of victims of global repression, and to produce documentation and publications that describe the architecture of the emerging global repression system and the harms it is inflicting on victims, at a time when no dedicated victim infrastructure exists to recognise or address these harms.Since spring 2025, I have been a targeted individual subjected to a pattern of repression that forced me to leave the United States and later to seek asylum in Europe. This repression has followed me across at least ten U.S. states and five countries in Europe. I arrived in Europe on 10 November 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland, and in Luxembourg on 31 December 2025; in less than seven days in Luxembourg, I have been forced through seven hotels, and in one hotel I had to change rooms six times within two to three days because the same pattern of harassment and toxic exposure followed me not only on the property but into each room, where the perpetrators appear to exploit architectural ingress points (such as HVAC systems, vents and other building conduits) to force toxic substances into the room.In my work on Global Repression Studies, global repression is distinguished from national or transnational repression. Transnational repression usually describes agents or private contractors following a victim across borders, whereas global repression refers to a pre‑positioned system embedded across multiple societies and sectors (such as hospitality, housing, policing, and corporate security) that is already in place before the victim arrives. When a targeted person like myself appears in a new country or city, this embedded system activates around the target and reproduces the same patterns of surveillance, harassment, and toxic exposure in each new location; similar to transnational repression, there may also be actors who physically travel with and follow the victim from place to place, operating alongside those embedded actors who activate once the victim arrives in a given location.The actors involved in my case appear to be private military and security companies (PMSCs) and related private security contractors using dual‑use cyber and surveillance technologies that exploit gaps in export control regimes such as the Wassenaar Arrangement. Their methods combine unlawful digital surveillance and intrusive monitoring of my devices with repeated low level exposure to volatile organic compounds or other toxic substances in my environment. This exposure can occur in accommodation and also in public and semi‑public places (for example in streets, hotels, restaurants, and transport), and appears to have adverse effects on my cognition, neurology, and overall physiology, and has made it impossible for me to live safely in communal or camp‑style accommodation. Because volatile organic compounds are short‑lived in the body and require specific testing within a short time window, and because police and hospitals typically lack appropriate detection tools and protocols, victims are generally unable to obtain positive toxicology results or standard medical and police reports that prove the harm, which creates a structural, systemic gap in protection and access to legal remedies.From what I have observed, this architecture is being used to target human rights defenders, whistleblowers, dissidents, and others in the form of extrajudicial elimination without due process. On 8 September 2025, I initiated a human rights complaint in Geneva and am now seeking counsel to help advance that complaint, but my most urgent need is safe housing. I have already reached out to ProtectDefenders.eu, the European mechanism for at risk human rights defenders, to request urgent support. However, because I am now an asylum seeker in Luxembourg and am not allowed to leave the country while my procedure is pending, I am not sure they will be able to assist me with relocation or safe housing outside Luxembourg, which makes it even more urgent for me to find a safe, non‑communal housing solution within Luxembourg territory.Without safe accommodation and effective protection, there is a real risk that I will simply become another statistic of this repression network, and that a rare opportunity to map its architecture and create safeguards will be lost. As both an academic researcher and a person who has lived this experience directly, I am in a unique position to document how this global repression system operates, to help design victim infrastructure, and to contribute to future policy and legislation that could protect others from what may be one of the most serious emerging threats to democracy in the post‑Cold War era. Unfortunately, export control frameworks such as the Wassenaar Arrangement were never designed to address intangible, cloud based surveillance tools and other dual‑use capabilities developed for war zones and now deployed against civilians; these technologies have outpaced legislation, oversight and accountability, enabling private contractors and associated actors to operate with near impunity.I require non‑communal, secure accommodation in Luxembourg where I will not be subjected to further toxic exposure by private contractors and associated networks, and I am asking for your assistance to obtain safe, private accommodation and guidance on any mechanisms that can protect me from this ongoing global repression system.In light of the above, I would be very grateful for your help with the following:* Information on what non‑communal accommodation options exist in Luxembourg for vulnerable asylum seekers who cannot safely live in camps or shared housing (for example small independent rooms or flats in supervised housing projects or similar), and how I can apply for them as an asylum seeker.* Support to obtain appropriate referrals to medical and psychological services, including where possible a toxicologist and a neurologist, so that I can document and treat the effects of toxic exposure and prolonged persecution.* Assistance to document my current unsafe housing situation in your files and, if possible, to provide a brief letter or note that I can use with other services (such as legal aid, hospitals, and the National Reception Office – ONA) confirming my vulnerability and my need for non‑communal accommodation.* Advice on any additional services or support (social, medical, legal or financial) for which I might be eligible as a vulnerable asylum seeker in Luxembourg.* If no suitable non‑communal accommodation is currently available in the state or NGO system, guidance and support to help me obtain independent housing that is compatible with my asylum status.Respectfully,Tamara Dixon This is a public episode. 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