In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang is a least populated land while it covers close to a sixth with the nation's area. Having resisted while in centuries the chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic mainly, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identification which usually, in specific, permitted them to keep a solid difference towards the Chinese invader. Indeed, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their historical past, the Uyghur People 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 whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they taken on, Uyghur People 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 arrival of Islam was a great change simply because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their 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 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only 9 million population - a trifle for this kind of large country. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular law allows them a few rights in a land exactly where their big 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 Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, looks quite illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with locations known as very sensitive, highly motivated the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job opportunities.
In reaction 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 flexibility, but primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place 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 civilization , even 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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