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 from the nation's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old East Turkestan, fell into under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic primarily, the Uyghur people have a very good religious identity which, in particular, enabled them to preserve a solid difference towards the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their historical past, the Uyghurs successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus starting the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they adopted, Uyghur People used 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 simply because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas 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 own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different 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 roots of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 8 million population - a little for this specific great region. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well known in an official way by China.
This law will allow these people 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 accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, seems pretty illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with nations well-known as sensitive, clearly encouraged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job 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 recognition 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 Uyghur peoples population continues today to proudly hold their identity and their tradition , though 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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