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 of the nation's area. Having resisted while in centuries the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a solid religious identification that, in specific, allowed them to maintain a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. In fact, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own history, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken, Uyghur People taken successively, and sometimes 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 mainly because it was accompanied by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used at present.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ 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 included the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 9 million inhabitants - a little for this particular big country. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular statute will allow them a few rights in a country exactly 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 Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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 resources in Xinjiang, and its area with locations recognized as sensitive, strongly 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 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.
Saying more freedom, but primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place Xinjiang.
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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly maintain their identification and their tradition , though they become a minority on their own land.
For further information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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