In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang is a least populated province while it covers close to a sixth with the nation's area. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the 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 Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim especially, the Uyghurs have a strong religious identification that, in specific, permitted them to protect a strong big difference towards the Chinese invader. Of course, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own history, the Uyghurs successively adopted 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 starting the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they adopted, the Uyghurs 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 entrance of Islam was a great change mainly because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly 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 culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People 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 directing out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek origins 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 people - a little for this specific large country. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been recognized in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular statute allows them a few rights in a land 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.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang, and its closeness with nations recognized as very sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger responsibility job opportunities.
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.
Saying more flexibility, but especially the recognition 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 Uyghur peoples population continues today to proudly hold their identity and their civilization , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
For 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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