In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the least populated province while it covers near to a sixth of the nation's area. Getting resisted during hundreds of years the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old Eastern Turkestan, fell under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is generally Uyghurs and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim above all, the Uyghur people have a deep religious identification which, in specific, permitted them to protect a solid difference towards the Chinese enemy. Certainly, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
While in their own history, the Uyghur People successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly converting to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore opening the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken on, Uyghur People taken 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 entrance of Islam was a great modification because it was supported by the assimilation 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 nowadays.
If their own writing, their language and their religion mark a real big difference with the culture 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 going 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 population - a little for this kind of great area. Therefore, Uyghur people 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 privileges in a land 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 Uyghur people and their culture in China, however, seems very illusory. The presence of all natural sources in Xinjiang, and its distance with locations known as very 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 higher 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 flexibility, but in particular the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was seriously repressed by the power authorities in area Xinjiang.
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 population continues today to proudly continue to keep their identity and their ethnic heritage , though they become a minority on their own territory.
For further information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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