In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated province while it covers near to a sixth of the nation's territory. Getting resisted during generations the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identification that, in specific, allowed them to protect a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own history, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus opening the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they adopted, 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 graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great change since it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs 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 roots of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has included the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only eight million people - a trifle for this particular huge country. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been recognized in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This law will allow these people a few privileges in a land where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is known as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, appears really illusory. The presence of all natural sources in Xinjiang, and its proximity with locations known as sensitive, highly motivated the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the more significant responsibility work 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.
Asserting more flexibility, but especially the acceptance 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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly keep up their identification and their civilization , though they become a minority on their own territory.
For additional information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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