Little about the Uyghurs

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

Muslim above all, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identity which usually, in specific, enabled them to protect a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. In fact, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.

During their history, the Uyghurs successively adopted 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 whole Central Asia.

Under the influence of the religions which they taken, the Uyghurs taken 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 coming of Islam was a great change simply because it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively 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 are different 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 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 8 million inhabitants - a little for this large region. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.

This particular law will allow them a few rights in a land 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 Uyghur people and their culture in China, however, appears pretty illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with locations known as very sensitive, clearly motivated the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the more significant responsibility job opportunities.

In response 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 specially the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in location 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 population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identification and their traditions , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own territory.

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