In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the very least populated province while it covers near to a sixth of the nation's territory. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim especially, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identity that, in particular, permitted them to keep a solid big difference towards the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own 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., thus beginning the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions 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 arrival of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was followed by the assimilation of the Uyghur land in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used today.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different 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 9 million population - a trifle for this particular immense region. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This law will allow them a few rights in a land exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is recognized as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with locations known as sensitive, highly urged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger 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 in particular the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in place 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 peoples population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identification and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more detailed information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment