In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang is the least populated province while it covers close to a sixth from the country's territory. Having resisted while in generations the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old East Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identification that, in particular, permitted them to preserve a strong big difference towards the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their historical past, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore starting the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken, the Uyghurs used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used these days.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs 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 origins of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has included the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only eight million people - a little for this kind of large land. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular law will allow them 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 known as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, seems really illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang, and its closeness with countries recognized as 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 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.
Asserting more flexibility, but in particular the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was seriously 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 up their identification and their ethnic heritage , though they become a minority on their own land.
For further information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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