In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth with the country's area. Getting resisted while in generations the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim especially, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identification that, in particular, enabled them to preserve a solid big difference towards the Chinese invader. Definitely, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their background, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly converting 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 religions which they taken, Uyghur People used successively, and at times in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great change simply because it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the immense Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used today.
If their writing, their own language and their religion mark a real difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ from their aspect, so aspect of Central Asia's people. A matt skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features directing out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek origins of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has included the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 9 million population - a little for this big country. Therefore, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This statute will allow them a few privileges in a country where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is known as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, appears pretty illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with countries known as sensitive, strongly 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 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.
Asserting more freedom, but specially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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 Uyghur peoples population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identification and their traditions , although they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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