In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang is the very least populated province whereas it covers near to a sixth from the nation's area. Having resisted during hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identity which, in particular, allowed them to maintain a solid difference towards the Chinese enemy. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent 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 moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People 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 mainly because it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used today.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ from their aspect, 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 roots of these men and these women.
For a few years, China has included the proper identity of these remote people, though they represent only nine million inhabitants - a trifle for this particular immense country. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This law will allow them a few privileges in a country where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, 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 China, however, seems pretty illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its distance with locations identified as sensitive, highly motivated the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the greater responsibility work 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 primarily the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in place Xinjiang.
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 , although they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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