Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director for Amnesty International, said the requirement to install the navigation system was consistent
with Xinjiang’s “important role as a trial ground” for China’s ambition to create a “world-class, high-tech counterterrorism force.”
“While preventing terrorist attacks is a legitimate concern for the government,” Mr. Bequelin said, “the kind of indiscriminate, quasi-totalitarian policies rolled out in Xinjiang” under Mr. Chen “are bound to create a deep pool of resentment
that will indeed turn into a real time bomb for China.”
In 2014, a series of bomb blasts in the prefecture killed six people, according to an official report.
Western China Region Aims to Track People by Requiring Car Navigation -
Officials in China’s largest prefecture, in the far-western region of Xinjiang, are requiring all drivers there to install
a Chinese-made satellite navigation system in their vehicles, according to an official news report this week.
The most notable burst of violence occurred in 2009, when ethnic rioting convulsed Urumqi, the regional
capital, resulting in about 200 deaths, most of them ethnic Han, according to official reports.
The prefecture’s population is 32 percent Uighur and 59 percent Han, according to official statistics,
even though the prefecture’s name implies that Mongolians are a significant population.
News of the navigation system requirement first appeared in a post on the official microblog of the Bayingol traffic police department on Feb. 4.
Parts of Xinjiang are home to ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who mostly practice Sunni Islam
and often resent policies made by the ethnic Han, the dominant group in China.