Little about the Uyghurs

In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang is a least populated land whereas it covers close to a sixth with the country's area. Getting resisted during generations the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang, or Old East Turkestan, fell under the Chinese Han domination in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghurs and Turkic - speaking System.

Islamic above all, the Uyghurs have a strong religious identification which, in specific, allowed them to keep a solid difference towards the Chinese enemy. Really, the Uyghur Empire 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 changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., therefore starting the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.

Under the effect of the religions which they adopted, the Uyghurs taken successively, and at times in a competing way, a large number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.

The entrance of Islam was a great modification mainly because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur areas in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used presently.

If their writing, their own 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 directing 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, though they represent only nine million inhabitants - a little for this kind of big area. Thus, the Uyghurs are now part of the fifty six racial minority groups having been well-known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.

This particular statute will allow them a few privileges in a country exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Therefore, Uyghur families 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 the People's Republic of China, however, looks very illusory. The presence of natural sources in Xinjiang, and its area with locations identified as very sensitive, highly encouraged 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 job opportunities.

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 freedom, but specially the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely 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 peoples population continues today to proudly hold their identity and their ethnic heritage , although they become a minority on their own territory.

For more information and facts about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com