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 very least populated land while it covers near to a sixth of the country's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old Turkistan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identity which, in particular, allowed them to preserve a strong difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their history, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions 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 unique graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great modification simply because it was accompanied by the assimilation 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 presently.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People 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 going 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 8 million population - a trifle for this specific big land. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This particular law will allow these people a few rights in a land 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 China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang, and its proximity with locations recognised as very sensitive, highly urged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility work 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 acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in location Xinjiang.
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 Uyghur peoples population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identification and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
For further information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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