In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated province while it covers near to a sixth with the country's area. Having resisted during hundreds of years the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identification which, in particular, allowed them to preserve a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Definitely, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own background, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they taken, the Uyghurs used successively, and at times 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 modification since it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People 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 pointing 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, although they represent only eight million inhabitants - a trifle for this particular great country. Therefore, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This law will allow them a few privileges in a land where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is recognized 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 quite illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with nations known as sensitive, highly encouraged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger responsibility jobs.
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 freedom, but primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely 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 maintain their identification and their tradition , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
For more information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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