In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a very least populated land while it covers close to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghur People and Turkic - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification that, in particular, permitted them to keep a solid difference towards the Chinese invader. Indeed, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own historical past, the Uyghurs successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result opening the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the influence of the religions which they adopted, the Uyghurs used successively, and at times in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.
The coming of Islam was a great change since it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition 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 pointing 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, though they represent only eight million population - a little for this kind of big country. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been known in an official way by China.
This law 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 recognized as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of all natural resources in Xinjiang, and its distance with countries acknowledged as very sensitive, highly motivated the government to speed up the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job opportunities.
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.
Saying more freedom, but primarily the recognition 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 keep their identity and their culture , despite the fact that they become a minority on their own land.
To get more information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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