In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang is the very least populated province whereas it covers near to a sixth of the country's area. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic mainly, the Uyghurs have a strong religious identification which usually, in particular, allowed them to keep a solid difference towards the Chinese enemy. Certainly, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own history, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result starting the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken, the Uyghurs 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 because it was followed by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turkic and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture 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 going out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek roots 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 particular great country. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been recognized 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.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks pretty illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang, and its distance with locations known as sensitive, clearly motivated the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility work 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 flexibility, but mainly the recognition 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 ethnic heritage , though they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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