In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang is the least populated province while it covers near to a sixth with the country's area. Having resisted while in generations the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old East Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic primarily, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identity that, in specific, enabled them to preserve a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Certainly, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own background, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they taken on, the Uyghurs taken successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great change mainly because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition 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 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, though they represent only 8 million inhabitants - a little for this particular immense land. Therefore, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by China.
This statute allows these people a few rights in a land where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur people 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 pretty illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its area 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 higher 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 specially the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place 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 population continues today to proudly keep up their identity and their ethnic heritage , though they become a minority on their own land.
For much 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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