ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
March 6, 2017
Prefecture in China’s Xinjiang
to track cars by satellite
By Gerry Shih
The Associated Press
EIJING — A pre-
fecture in China’s
far western Xin-
jiang region is requiring all
vehicles to install satellite
tracking systems as part of
stepped-up
measures
against violent attacks.
Traffic
police
in
Bayingolin Mongol Auton-
omous
Prefecture
an-
nounced the regulation
shortly after thousands of
heavily armed police pa-
raded in the Xinjiang
capital and ruling Commu-
nist Party officials vowed to
ramp up their campaign
against separatists and
Islamic militants.
The
vehicle-tracking
program in Bayingolin will
utilize China’s homegrown
Beidou satellite system,
launched in recent years to
reduce China’s reliance on
U.S.-based GPS providers
for sensitive applications.
Authorities said they will
also track cars using RFID
technology embedded in
license plates.
“In recent years, the ter-
rorist situation around the
world has become severe,
and cars are the main
means of transport for
terrorists,” said prefectural
authorities in an online
statement.
Authorities
aimed to register and track
up to 20,000 vehicles, the
statement said.
Gas stations will only
serve cars equipped with
the tracking system, ac-
cording to a separate local
news report. Police officials
in the prefecture confirmed
the tracking program to
The AP but declined to
answer questions.
Xinjiang officials have
sharply increased surveil-
lance, street searches, and
police patrols in recent
years amid bombings,
B
RIGHTS ROLLBACK. The secretary-general of Amnesty Interna-
tional, Salil Shetty, shows the 408-page Amnesty International report
during a press conference in Paris. Amnesty named Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte, and U.S. President Donald Trump among
leaders it said are “wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats,
and dehumanizes entire groups of people.” (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Amnesty blames Trump, others
in global rollback of rights
By John Leicester
The Associated Press
ARIS — Amnesty International says “toxic”
fear-mongering by anti-establishment politicians,
among them U.S. President Donald Trump and
the leaders of Turkey, Hungary, and the Philippines, are
contributing to a global pushback against human rights.
Releasing its 408-page annual report on rights abuses
around the world, the watchdog group described 2016 as
“the year when the cynical use of ‘us vs. them’ narratives
of blame, hate, and fear took on a global prominence to a
level not seen since the 1930s,” when Adolf Hitler rose to
power in Germany.
Amnesty named Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte among leaders
it said are “wielding a toxic agenda that hounds,
scapegoats, and dehumanizes entire groups of people.”
“Poisonous” rhetoric employed by Trump in his election
campaign exemplified “the global trend of angrier and
more divisive politics,” Amnesty said.
“The limits of what is acceptable have shifted.
Politicians are shamelessly and actively legitimizing all
sorts of hateful rhetoric and policies based on people’s
identity: misogyny, racism, and homophobia. The first
target has been refugees and, if this continues in 2017,
others will be in the crosshairs.”
The group’s annual report, “The State of the World’s
Human Rights,” documented what it called “grave
violations of human rights” in 159 countries in 2016.
Amnesty said governments “turned a blind eye to war
crimes, pushed through deals that undermine the right to
claim asylum, passed laws that violate free expression,
incited the murder of people simply because they are
accused of using drugs, justified torture and mass
surveillance, and extended draconian police powers.”
It added that “the big question in 2017 will be how far
the world lets atrocities go before doing something about
them.”
Exceptionally, London-based Amnesty chose to launch
its report in Paris.
Salil Shetty, the group’s secretary-general, said France
has used emergency powers introduced in 2015 in the
wake of terror attacks in an abusive and “deeply
discriminatory” manner, confining more than 600 people,
mostly Muslims, under house arrest and banning more
than 140 protests.
“Even states that once claimed to champion rights
abroad are now too busy rolling back human rights at
home to hold others to account,” Amnesty said. “The more
countries backtrack on fundamental human-rights
commitments, the more we risk a domino effect of leaders
emboldened to knock back established human-rights
protections.”
France’s government has repeatedly defended the
emergency powers as a necessary safeguard against the
severe terror threat it says is facing the country, and
parliament has repeatedly voted to extend those powers.
P
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SAFETY VS. PRIVACY. Vehicles are seen driving on snow-covered roads in Urumqi, the capital of north-
west China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. A prefecture in China’s Xinjiang region is requiring all vehicles
to install satellite tracking systems as part of stepped-up measures against violent attacks. Traffic police in
Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture announced the regulation shortly after thousands of heavily armed
police paraded in Urumqi and Communist Party officials vowed to ramp up a campaign against separatists and
Islamic militants. (Wang Fei/Xinhua via AP)
militants
have
been
vehicle and knife attacks Central Asian states.
The Chinese government reported in recent months
blamed
on
separatist
militants from the native denies religious discrimi- in the region’s southern
ethnic Uighur minority. nation and says its policies towns.
At a rally in the regional
Uighur activists say eco- are needed to maintain
nomic marginalization and stability in a region capital of Urumqi, Xinjiang
by
militant party official Zhu Hailun
a repressive government targeted
exhorted rows of rifle-
presence
—
including Islamic radicals.
Despite the constant toting soldiers and police in
restrictions on Muslim reli-
gious and cultural prac- state of police lockdown, tactical anti-riot uniforms
knife-wielding to use their “hot blood and
tices — have fuelled resent- three
ment and feed a vicious attackers killed five and loyalty” to defend the peo-
cycle of radicalization and injured five others in ple and deal a “crushing,
Xinjiang’s far western obliterating blow” against
violence.
Xinjiang shares a border Pishan county last month, separatist and radical
with Afghanistan, Paki- while
several
clashes Islamic forces from Central
stan, and several unstable between police forces and Asia.