In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang is a very least populated land whereas it covers close to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted while in generations the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Islamic above all, the Uyghurs have a strong religious identity that, in specific, enabled them to keep a strong difference in opposition to the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their background, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore starting the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the religions which they taken, the Uyghurs used 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 modification mainly because it was accompanied 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 currently.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also are different from their characteristic, so characteristic 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 integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only eight million population - a trifle for this specific huge area. Thus, Uyghur people are now part of the fifty six ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.
This particular statute will allow these people a few privileges in a land exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is known as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The integration of the Uyghur people and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, seems really illusory. The presence of all-natural resources in Xinjiang, and its proximity with locations known as very sensitive, strongly encouraged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the higher responsibility job 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 recognition of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in area 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 , even though they become a minority on their own territory.
To get more detailed information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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