In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated land while it covers close to a sixth with the country's territory. Getting resisted during generations the chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic most importantly, the Uyghur people have a very good religious identification which usually, in specific, enabled them to protect a solid big difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their history, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally moving 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 adopted, Uyghur People used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great change simply because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also differ from their characteristic, so characteristic of Central Asia's people. A matt skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features going out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek origins of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only eight million population - a little for this particular immense region. Therefore, 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 particular statute will allow them a few rights in a land exactly 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.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in China, however, seems really illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with countries identified as very sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger responsibility jobs.
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.
Asserting more freedom, but especially the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in area 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 Uyghur population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identification and their traditions , although 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
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