In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth with the nation's territory. Getting resisted while in generations the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old East Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identity which, in particular, permitted them to maintain a strong difference towards the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their history, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result opening the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they adopted, Uyghur People used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great modification simply because it was supported by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used these days.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture 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 9 million population - a little for this specific great land. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This law will allow them a few rights in a land 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, seems very illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang, and its distance with countries well-known as very sensitive, highly urged the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility jobs.
In response to this true will to assimilate the Uyghurs into the Chinese culture, an independent party like East Turkistan Islamic Movement(ETIM) was born in the early 1990.
Asserting more flexibility, but in particular the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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 ethnic heritage , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
For further information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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