Little about the Uyghurs

In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated land whereas it covers near to a sixth with the nation's territory. Having resisted while in generations the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.

Muslim primarily, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identity which usually, in specific, permitted them to protect a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Certainly, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.

While in their history, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.

Under the effect of the beliefs which they adopted, the Uyghurs taken 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 coming of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was accompanied by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.

If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different from their characteristic, so characteristic 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 included the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only eight million population - a trifle for this particular great area. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by China.

This statute will allow these people a few privileges in a land where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, 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 China, however, seems quite illusory. The presence of all natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its area with locations recognized 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 larger 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.

Asserting more flexibility, but especially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in area 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 , although they become a minority on their own territory.

For much more information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com