In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated province while it covers near to a sixth of the country's territory. Having resisted during centuries the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell into under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identity which usually, in particular, permitted them to preserve a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Really, 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., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they taken, 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 coming of Islam was a great change since it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real 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 going 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 nine million inhabitants - a trifle for this great area. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 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 land where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, 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 China, however, seems very illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its proximity with locations recognised 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 jobs.
In reaction 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 freedom, but primarily the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
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 population continues today to proudly keep their identification and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
To get more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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