In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang is the least populated land while it covers near to a sixth with the country's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification that, in specific, allowed them to maintain a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Definitely, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their historical past, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result opening the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they adopted, the Uyghurs used successively, and at times in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great modification because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different 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 pointing 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 eight million inhabitants - a little for this huge region. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular statute allows these people a few privileges in a land exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, 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 Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its area with locations recognized as very sensitive, highly encouraged the government to accelerate the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job 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 seriously repressed by the power authorities in area 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 maintain their identity and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
For more information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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