In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a least populated land while it covers near to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted during centuries the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old East Turkistan, fell under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic above all, the Uyghurs have a deep religious identity that, in specific, enabled them to preserve a solid big difference towards the Chinese invader. Definitely, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own historical past, the Uyghurs 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., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People used 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 modification mainly because it was followed by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.
If their own writing, their own 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 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 8 million people - a little for this large area. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This particular statute will allow these people a few rights in a country where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is recognized as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its proximity with nations known as sensitive, clearly motivated 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 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 flexibility, but primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place 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 population continues today to proudly keep up their identity and their culture , though they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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