In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated land while it covers close to a sixth from the nation's area. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim especially, the Uyghur people have a very good religious identity that, in specific, enabled them to keep a solid difference towards the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own historical past, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken, the Uyghurs used successively, and at times 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 modification mainly because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different from their characteristic, so characteristic of Central Asia's people. A shiny 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only 9 million people - a little for this specific great area. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This law allows them a few privileges in a country exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, 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 the People's Republic of China, however, seems quite illusory. The presence of all natural sources in Xinjiang, and its distance with countries known as sensitive, highly 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 work 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.
Saying more freedom, but primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely 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 peoples population continues today to proudly keep up their identification and their ethnic heritage , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
For much more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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