In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-west part of China, the land of Xinjiang is the least populated province whereas it covers close to a sixth with the nation's territory. Getting resisted during hundreds of years the chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim primarily, the Uyghur people have a solid religious identity which, in specific, enabled them to preserve 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.
While in their history, the Uyghur People successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the entire Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People used 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 entrance of Islam was a great change since it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur land 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 tradition of Chinese Han, the Uyghurs also differ from their aspect, so characteristic 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 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 9 million people - a little for this particular large area. So, the Uyghurs 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 law will allow these people a few rights in a country where their 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.
The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in China, however, seems really illusory. The presence of all-natural sources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its distance with countries identified as very sensitive, strongly 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 jobs.
In response 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 flexibility, but especially the recognition of their true identity, this movement was seriously 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 Uyghurs population continues today to proudly maintain their identity and their culture , though they become a minority on their own land.
For more information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment