In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the very least populated province while it covers near to a sixth from the nation's area. Having resisted during hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mostly Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghurs have a solid religious identity that, in specific, permitted them to keep a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Indeed, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own background, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore opening the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People taken successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The entrance of Islam was a great modification simply because it was supported by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the immense Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.
If their writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different from their aspect, so aspect of Central Asia's people. A shiny skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features going 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, although they represent only eight million population - a trifle for this specific large land. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the 56 racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by China.
This particular law will allow these people a few rights in a country exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks quite illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with nations well-known as sensitive, highly encouraged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job opportunities.
In response 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 flexibility, but in particular the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang.
The situations 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 hold their identity and their ethnic heritage , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
For more information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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