Portraits of Uyghurs

In the middle of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the north-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a very least populated land while it covers near to a sixth of the country's territory. Getting resisted during centuries the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell into within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is primarily Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.

Islamic above all, the Uyghurs have a very good religious identification which usually, in specific, enabled them to preserve a solid big difference towards the Chinese enemy. Of course, the Uyghur Kingdom 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., as a result beginning the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.

Under the influence of the religions which they taken on, 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 change because it was accompanied by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Islamic Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan slowly replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used today.

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 aspect, so aspect 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 eight million population - a little for this specific huge region. So, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 ethnic minority groups having been well known in an official way by the People's Republic of China.

This statute allows these people a few rights in a land exactly where their big difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur families escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, seems very illusory. The presence of all natural resources in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and its closeness with nations identified as sensitive, strongly motivated the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the larger responsibility jobs.

In response 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 severely repressed by the power authorities in place 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 Uyghur population continues today to proudly keep up their identification and their tradition , although they become a minority on their own territory.

To get more information and facts about the Uyghurs, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com