Portraits of Uyghur People
In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 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 Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell under the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
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Muslim above all, the Uyghurs have a strong religious identity that, in specific, permitted them to maintain a solid big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Indeed, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
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During their background, the Uyghurs successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result starting the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they adopted, 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 graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great change because it was followed by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also differ from their characteristic, so aspect 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.
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For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only 8 million inhabitants - a trifle for this particular huge land. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This particular statute will allow them a few rights in a land exactly where their 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 Uyghur people and their culture in the People’s Republic of China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its proximity with locations identified as sensitive, strongly motivated the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the more significant responsibility jobs.
In response 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.
Saying more flexibility, but in particular the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely 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 peoples population continues today to proudly maintain their identification and their culture , though they become a minority on their own territory.
For additional information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com