In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the very least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth from the nation's area. Getting resisted during hundreds of years the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim primarily, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification which, in particular, permitted them to preserve a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their history, the Uyghur People 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 opening the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken on, the Uyghurs taken 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 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 Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used at present.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also differ from their characteristic, so aspect of Central Asia's people. A shiny 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, though they represent only eight million inhabitants - a little for this specific large land. So, Uyghur people 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 law will allow these people a few privileges in a country exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is recognized as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, seems really illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its proximity with locations well-known as very sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger 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.
Asserting more flexibility, but mainly the recognition 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 their identity and their ethnic heritage , even though they become a minority on their own land.
To get more information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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