This is a list of people granted political asylum for individual and publicly known reasons. They were persecuted because of their actions as individuals, not because they were members of a persecuted group. Individual reasons for persecution can be found in the notes column of the table.
| Year | Name | Citizenship or Persecuting power or Country refusing protection | Country which granted asylum | Occupation | Notes / References | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1849 | Karl Marx | German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist | In exile in London from 1849. | |||||||||||
| 1929 | Leon Trotsky | Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army | In exile in Turkey from 1929–1933, in France 1933–1935, in Norway 1935–1937, in Mexico 1937–1940. | - | 1954 | Peter Norwood Duberg | United States citizen, United Nations official, employed in Paris at UNESCO | For reasons of his early adulthood membership in the Communist Party, Duberg, along with several other U.S. citizens working in international organizations, became the subject of U.S. official investigation in the early 1950s. This led to a loyalty investigation by the U.S. State Department in 1953, also his name being discussed in the U.S. Congress House Committee on un-American Activities.[1] During 1953, while living in France, and working as an official at UNESCO (the United Nations Education and Scientific Organization) Mr. Duberg refused to answer a series of loyalty-related questionnaires. This resulted in decisions taken which led to termination of his professional employment at the United Nations in 1954. France refused to protect the Duberg family, leading to their need for political asylum. They applied for, and were granted asylum in Switzerland. | ||||||
| 1956 | József Mindszenty | (embassy) | Cardinal of the Catholic Church as the Archbishop of Esztergom in Hungary | |||||||||||
| 1959 | The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso | Head monk of the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism (Dalai Lama) | In exile in India since 1959.[2] Currently residing in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala from where he established the Tibetan Government in Exile. | |||||||||||
| 1964-1976 | João Goulart |  Uruguay | 24º President of Brazil,[3] deposed by the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état.[4] | He sent a letter requesting the right of asylum on 3 April 1964 and went in exile on 4 April 1964.[5] On 21 April he was conceded the asylum and only waived it on 9 November 1976, with the goal of returning to his home country, but died on 6 December.[6] | ||||||||||
| 1964-1979 | Leonel Brizola | Uruguay | Federal deputy from Guanabara (1963-1964).[7] | Part of the opposition against the military dictatorship in Brazil, he had asylum from Uruguay from 3 May 1964[8] until his expulsion in 1977[9] and then had US asylum from 1977-1979.[10] | ||||||||||
| 1967 | Svetlana Alliluyeva | Writer and lecturer; daughter of Joseph Stalin | ||||||||||||
| 1979 | Mohammad Reza Pahlavi | Shah of Iran | ||||||||||||
| 1979-1980 | Anastasio Somoza Debayle | President of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza Debayle | ||||||||||||
| 1984 | Assata Shakur | United States citizen, African-American activist, member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black Liberation Army (BLA). | Escaped prison escapee in 1979, two years after being convicted in 1977 of the 1973 first degree murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.[11] | |||||||||||
| 1985 | Walter Polovchak | Soviet-born Ukrainian youth who in 1980 then at age 12 was the youngest person to announce that he wanted to leave the Communist world and not return with his parents to what was then Soviet Ukraine. In 1985 after five years of court battles on October 3-his 18th birthday-he was able to stay permanently in the U.S. when he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. | ||||||||||||
| 1986 | Choi Eun-hee | South Korean actress | [12] | |||||||||||
| 1986 | Shin Sang-ok | South Korean film producer and director | ||||||||||||
| 1992 | Military officers | After the failure of the November 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état, most of its participants fled to Peru, where they were received by dictator Alberto Fujimori as political asylees. Carlos Andrés Pérez's government had previously severed diplomatic relations with Peru in April after Fujimori carried out a self-coup the same year.[13] | ||||||||||||
| 1997 | Christoph Meili | National of Switzerland, bank-security guard and whistleblowers at the Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS) | Mr. Meili was a security guard at UBS, where he witnessed the destruction of documents related to World War II accounts of Jews. He reported the destruction, and was subjected to prosecution, also death threats. The family fled to the United States and were granted political asylum via a private law passed specifically for the Meili family.[14] [15] [16] [17] Unhappy in the United States, Mr. Meili later returned to Switzerland safely. | |||||||||||
| 1997/8 | Nury Turkel | Graduate student, later Commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | [18] [19] [20] [21] | |||||||||||
| 1999–2004, 2007 | Alex Konanykhin and his wife | Russian entrepreneur, former banker | ||||||||||||
| 2001 | Mohamed El Ghanem | Former officer of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, lawyer, Doctor of Law and Professor. | Several years after receiving refugee status in Switzerland, Dr. El Ghanem later was arbitrarily detained without charge for refusing to collaborate with Swiss Federal Police in a spying project on local Muslim community. He remained detained without trial for six years. He was released into a hospital in Geneva, under control of the Prosecutor's office: He had brain damage from forced drugging in prison. As of 2023, his whereabouts are unknown. | |||||||||||
| 2001 | Alexander Litvinenko | Former officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB) | ||||||||||||
| 2002 | Pedro Carmona | Venezuelan businessman, declared interim President of Venezuela during the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt | [22] | |||||||||||
| 2003 | Akhmed Zakayev | Former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria | ||||||||||||
| 2003 | Boris Berezovsky | Former Russian government official, businessman and mathematician, member of Russian Academy of Sciences | ||||||||||||
| 2004 | Ilyas Akhmadov | Former politician and foreign minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria | [23] | |||||||||||
| 2005 | Bobby Fischer | Chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion, chess author | [24] [25] | |||||||||||
| 2007 | John Robles | Leak site owner, English teacher, investigative journalist, writer, US foreign policy critic, publisher. | John Anthony Robles II is a Taino Indian born in Puerto Rico. In 2007 under false pretenses his US Passport was revoked and he was left stateless in Russia. John worked for the Russian Government and was granted asylum along with his two US born American children. John left the US in 1995 after attempting to expose CPS child trafficking and initiating the formation of a Grand Jury. On the day the Grand Jury was to convene with Robles providing testimony John was detained but not charged and accused of working for the KGB and the Russians. He was forced to leave the US with his children of whom he had full custody and to seek asylum.[26] Robles was a correspondent, newsreader and political commentator for the Voice of Russia and quoted worldwide News: Romney and his promise of 'Republican hell'. Foreign Policy. | |||||||||||
| 2007 | Irakli Okruashvili | Georgian politician | ||||||||||||
| 2008 | Chere Lyn Tomayko | United States citizen | Chere Lyn Tomayko, wanted in the United States for parental kidnapping, was granted asylum in June 2008 by Costa Rica. Tomayko's claims that her actions were justified by domestic violence she suffered were taken into account by the Costa Rican authorities.[27] | |||||||||||
| 2008 | Nixon Moreno | [28] | ||||||||||||
| 2009 | Manuel Rosales | Venezuelan educator and politician | [29] | |||||||||||
| 2010 | Virginia Vallejo | Colombian writer, journalist, columnist, media personality, television anchorwoman,[30] and socialite | Biography of the political asylee[31] | |||||||||||
| 2011 | Savva Terentyev | Russian blogger and musician | ||||||||||||
| 2011 | Al-Saadi Gaddafi | Third son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; Libyan former association football player | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | Julian Assange | (embassy) | Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist | Until 11 April 2019, he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.[32] Ecuador rescinded Assange's asylum status and citizenship in 2019.[33] Since 2019, Assange has been imprisoned in HMP Belmarsh prison fighting against extradition to the United States. His last appeal is in February 2024. | ||||||||||
| 2012 | Alexander Barankov | Belarusian former policeman or army captain | [34] [35] [36] | |||||||||||
| 2012 | Safia Farkash | Widow of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and former First Lady of Libya | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | Muhammad Gaddafi | Eldest son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; chairman of the General Posts and Telecommunications Company | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | Ayesha Gaddafi | Fifth child and only daughter of former Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi; Libyan mediator and military official, former UN Goodwill Ambassador, and lawyer | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | Hannibal Muammar Gaddafi | Fifth son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; first consultant to the Management Committee of the General National Maritime Transport Company (GNMTC) of Libya | ||||||||||||
| 2013 | Edward Snowden | United States citizen; CIA Officer. Former Booz Allen Hamilton employee worked as a system administrator under an NSA contract. | Granted temporary asylum in Russia.[37] Granted Russian citizenship in 2022.[38] | |||||||||||
| 2014 | Denise Harvey | United States citizen | Granted asylum in Canada after being sentenced to 30 years in prison by a Florida court for having consensual sex with a 16-year-old teenage boy. The crime she was convicted of is not a crime in Canada (i.e., consensual sex between a 16-year-old and an adult not in a position of authority with respect to the teen) and the Canadian Immigration and Review Board ruled that the 30-year sentence was "cruel and unusual punishment".[39] [40] [41] | |||||||||||
| 2014 | Suren Gazaryan | Russian citizen, Green activist | Goldman Prize recipient in 2014[42] | |||||||||||
| 2014 | Malaysian citizen, student activist | Granted asylum in Sweden after being detained by Royal Malaysia Police and served 22 days in prison for insulting royalty.[43] | ||||||||||||
| 2014 | Tamara Sujú | Venezuelan lawyer and human rights activist | Granted international protection status for a period of ten renewable years.[44] | |||||||||||
| 2017 | Singaporean blogger | Charged by the State Courts of Singapore after posting videos critical of religious communities in Singapore, and of Lee Kuan Yew. Later granted asylum in the United States.[45] | ||||||||||||
| 2018 | Nikola Gruevski | Macedonian citizen, former Prime minister of Macedonia | [46] | |||||||||||
| 2018 | Rosmit Mantilla | National Assembly deputy | [47] | |||||||||||
| 2019 | Evo Morales | Bolivian citizen, former President of Bolivia | [48] | |||||||||||
| 2020 | Christopher Mark Doyon aka Commander X | US Citizen, Activist/Author | First US citizen in history to receive political asylum in Mexico. Granted refugee status for acts associated with Anonymous, and his support of Julian Assange & WikiLeaks.[49] Doyen was granted humanitarian protection status, but Mexico did not provide real protection from U.S. removal-requests for Doyen: In 2021, a multi-agency team of American, Mexican and intergovernmental authorities (including the Mexican National Police, the U.S. FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the US State Department and Interpol)[50] stormed the compound in which he resided in Mexico city and deported him without a hearing. He was presented to U.S. authorities in Northern California, where he pled guilty (via plea-deal) to hacking the city of Santa Cruz, was imprisoned for about a year; he was released, in 2022.[51] | |||||||||||
| 2021 | Nathan Law | ( resident) | Hong Kong resident, Politician and Activist | Self Exiled in United Kingdom after China's increasing control over Hong Kong.[52] | ||||||||||
| 2021 | Tuhin Das | Bengali Writer, Activist | Exiled in 2016 for speaking out against Islamic fundamentalism. Granted Asylum in the United States.[53] [54] | |||||||||||
| 2022 | Rafael Correa | Former President of Ecuador | In 2022, Ecuador's Court President began extradition request seeking the return of former President Rafael Correa, who lives in Belgium and in 2020 was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison on bribery allegations.. extradition was refused and he was granted asylum in Belgium.[55] [56] | |||||||||||
| 2024 | Jorge Glas | Former Vice President of Ecuador | Jorge Glas was granted political asylum by Mexico just hours before authorities in Ecuador raided their embassy and took Glas into custody. This event triggered a diplomatic crisis which was condemned by other countries in the Americas. | |||||||||||