In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated land while it covers close to a sixth with the country's area. Getting resisted while in centuries the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim especially, the Uyghurs have a deep religious identification that, in particular, enabled them to protect a solid big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own background, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they taken on, Uyghur People used 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 entrance of Islam was a great change because it was supported by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used at present.
If their writing, their own language and their religion mark a real 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 pointing 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, although they represent only nine million people - a little for this specific large region. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 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 where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its area with nations recognized as sensitive, clearly urged 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 work opportunities.
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 mainly the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in area Xinjiang.
The events 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 up their identity and their traditions , though they become a minority on their own land.
For more information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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