In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated land whereas it covers near to a sixth from the nation's area. Getting resisted while in centuries the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic most importantly, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identity which usually, in specific, allowed them to maintain a strong difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Of course, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own history, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally 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 effect of the religions which they adopted, Uyghur People taken successively, and sometimes 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 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 slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different from their aspect, so characteristic of Central Asia's people. A matt 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only nine million population - a little for this particular great land. So, Uyghur people 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 where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its area with countries well-known as very sensitive, strongly urged 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 job opportunities.
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 flexibility, but mainly the recognition of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in area 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 keep up their identity and their civilization , despite the fact that 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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