In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang is a very least populated province while it covers near to a sixth with the nation's territory. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identification that, in specific, allowed them to preserve a solid difference towards the Chinese invader. Certainly, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their background, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they taken, the Uyghurs taken successively, and sometimes 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 modification because it was accompanied by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used at present.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only nine million inhabitants - a trifle for this specific great region. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This statute will allow them a few privileges in a land where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is known 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 very illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with nations recognised as sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the greater responsibility jobs.
In response 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 especially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in location 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 their identity and their ethnic heritage , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
For much more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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