Little about the Uyghurs

In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang is a very least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.

Islamic especially, the Uyghurs have a solid religious identification which usually, in specific, allowed them to keep a strong big difference towards the Chinese invader. Indeed, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.

While in their own historical past, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore starting the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.

Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken, the Uyghurs used successively, and at times in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.

The entrance of Islam was a great change mainly because it was followed by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turco-Mongolian 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 language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ 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 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 nine million population - a little for this specific huge land. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by China.

This law allows them a few rights in a land exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted 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 really illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with countries well-known as sensitive, strongly 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 work 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.

Asserting more freedom, but mainly the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place 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 Uyghur peoples population continues today to proudly keep up their identity and their ethnic heritage , though they become a minority on their own land.

To get more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com