Little about the Uyghurs

In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang is a very least populated land while it covers near to a sixth from the country's area. Having resisted while in hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.

Islamic especially, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identification which, in particular, permitted them to protect a solid difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Certainly, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a great civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.

During their 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., therefore starting the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.

Under the influence of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People used successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.

The coming of Islam was a great change simply because it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the immense Turco-Mongolian and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.

If their 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 shiny skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features pointing out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek roots of these men and these women.

For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only nine million population - a little for this immense land. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been known in an official way by China.

This particular law will allow these people 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 known as the second official language in Xinjiang.

The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, seems quite illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its closeness with nations well-known as sensitive, clearly 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 greater responsibility work opportunities.

In reaction 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 freedom, 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 keep up their identity and their tradition , although 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