In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the province of Xinjiang is a least populated land while it covers close to a sixth from the country's area. Having resisted while in centuries the Han Chinese control, Xinjiang, or Old Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mainly Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.
Muslim mainly, the Uyghur people have a strong religious identification that, in specific, permitted them to preserve a strong difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Without a doubt, the Uyghur Empire of Mongolia knew a excellent civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.
During their background, the Uyghurs successively taken on Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before lastly moving to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., as a result opening the way to the Islamization of the whole Central Asia.
Under the influence of the beliefs which they adopted, the Uyghurs taken successively, and sometimes 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 simply because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turco-Mongolian and Muslim Empire. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used nowadays.
If their own writing, their own language and their religion mark a real big difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also are different from their characteristic, so aspect of Central Asia's people. A shiny skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features going 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 8 million inhabitants - a little for this kind of large region. Therefore, Uyghur people are now part of the 56 racial 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 privileges in a land where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families 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 the People's Republic of China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang, and its closeness with countries acknowledged as 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 jobs.
In reaction 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.
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 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 population continues today to proudly hold their identification and their culture , though they become a minority on their own land.
For additional information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com
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