In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-west part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a very least populated province while it covers close to a sixth from the nation's territory. Getting resisted during hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic mainly, the Uyghurs have a deep religious identification which, in specific, permitted them to protect a solid big difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their own historical past, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they taken, the Uyghurs taken successively, and at times in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own unique graphic system.
The arrival of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was supported by the assimilation of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used these days.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real difference with the culture of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different from their characteristic, 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, although they represent only eight million people - a little for this particular large area. Thus, the Uyghurs 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 particular statute allows them a few rights in a country exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of all natural sources in Xinjiang, and its area with locations known as sensitive, clearly motivated the government to accelerate 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 Uyghur people 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 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 maintain their identification and their culture , though they become a minority on their own territory.
For more information about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment