In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated land while it covers close to a sixth with the country's area. Having resisted while in centuries the chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a solid religious identification which, in particular, enabled them to protect a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Indeed, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own background, the Uyghur People 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., therefore 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 sometimes in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The entrance of Islam was a great modification since it was accompanied by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. 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 tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also differ 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 origins 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 people - a little for this large land. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This statute allows them a few privileges in a country exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is recognized 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 natural sources in Xinjiang, and its area with countries acknowledged as 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 more significant responsibility jobs.
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 in particular the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in place Xinjiang.
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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly hold their identification and their civilization , even though they become a minority on their own land.
For further information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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