In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a very least populated land while it covers near to a sixth from the nation's territory. Having resisted while in centuries the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identity which usually, in specific, permitted them to preserve a strong big difference towards the Chinese invader. In fact, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their background, 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., thus starting the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken, the Uyghurs used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great change because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turkic and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different from their aspect, 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, although they represent only nine million people - a trifle for this particular great region. Thus, 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 statute allows these people a few rights in a country exactly where their 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 Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks pretty illusory. The presence of all natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its proximity with locations acknowledged as very sensitive, highly 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 more significant responsibility jobs.
In reaction 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 freedom, but specially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in place 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 their identification and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
For further information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment