In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang is a least populated land whereas it covers close to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic primarily, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification that, in particular, permitted them to maintain a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Indeed, 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 taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus opening the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People taken 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 change since it was followed by the absorption 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 today.
If their writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture 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 9 million inhabitants - a little for this particular great region. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This statute will allow them a few rights in a country where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families 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 the People's Republic of China, however, seems quite illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with locations identified as sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to speed up 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 Uyghurs into the Chinese culture, an independent party like East Turkistan Islamic Movement(ETIM) was born in the early 1990.
Saying more freedom, but especially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously 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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identity and their ethnic heritage , 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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