In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated land while it covers near to a sixth with the country's area. Getting resisted while in centuries the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identity that, in specific, permitted them to protect a strong big difference towards the Chinese enemy. In fact, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a amazing civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own background, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus opening the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions 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 entrance of Islam was a great change since it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used today.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different 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 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 9 million population - a little for this kind of great land. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six ethnic 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 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 China, however, appears pretty illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang, and its closeness with countries known as very sensitive, highly encouraged 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 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 in particular the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in area Xinjiang.
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 peoples population continues today to proudly hold their identification and their tradition , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own territory.
For further information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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