In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang is the least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth from the country's territory. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic mainly, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identification which usually, in specific, enabled them to preserve a solid big difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their historical past, the Uyghur People 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., as a result opening the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they taken on, the Uyghurs taken successively, and at times in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The entrance of Islam was a great change mainly because it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ from their characteristic, so characteristic 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 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 eight million people - a little for this kind of immense area. Therefore, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This statute allows them a few rights in a country exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is known as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, seems quite illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with locations recognised as sensitive, highly encouraged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher 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.
Asserting more flexibility, but specially the acceptance 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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly keep their identification and their culture , though they become a minority on their own land.
To get more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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