In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the very least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth of the country's territory. Getting resisted during generations the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim most importantly, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification that, in specific, enabled them to protect a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Definitely, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their background, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken, Uyghur People used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different from their characteristic, so aspect of Central Asia's people. A matt skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features pointing out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek roots of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 9 million people - a little for this specific big country. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been recognized in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular statute will allow them a few rights in a land exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang, and its distance with locations identified as very sensitive, clearly encouraged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the more significant responsibility work opportunities.
In reaction to this true will to assimilate the Uyghur people into the Chinese culture, an independent party like East Turkistan Islamic Movement(ETIM) was born in the early 1990.
Saying more freedom, but mainly the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang.
The events of September 11, 2001, were the perfect occasion for the Chinese government to justify true reprisals: they declared the "Uyghur freedom fighters" as dangerous terrorists linked to Al Quaida because of their Muslim origins and their proximity with Pakistan and Afghanistan... However, the terrible repression which followed did not calm down the anger. The Uyghurs population continues today to proudly keep up their identification and their civilization , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more detailed information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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