The Uyghurs (Uyg. ئۇيغۇر, Uyghurlar; Chinese. 维吾尔, Wéiwú "ěr) are the indigenous people of East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC. By religion, they are Sunni Muslims. The Uyghur language belongs to the Altai Turkic language group. In Altai, the largest number of Uyghurs lives in the Altai District of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Self-name

Resettlement and number

The total number is approximately 10 million people. Of these, more than 9 million live in East Turkestan / XUAR, as well as in major cities in eastern China. A small enclave of Uighurs, numbering about 7 thousand people, also exists in the Hunan province, in the southeast of the PRC, where they have been living for several centuries.

Uyghurs in Urumqi

The Uyghur community, abroad, with a total number of about 500 thousand, is represented in many countries, but the main part lives in the republics of Central Asia, the number of the Central Asian community is approximately ~ 350 thousand. Of these, in the Republic of Kazakhstan ~ 250 thousand, in the Kyrgyz Republic ~ 60 thousand, in Uzbekistan ~ 50 thousand, in Turkmenistan ~ 3 thousand.

A large Uyghur diaspora exists in the Republic of Turkey, numbering about 40 thousand, as well as in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ~ 30 thousand. There are also Uyghur communities in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada, USA, Japan, Australia. Uyghur enclaves can be found in such cities of the world as Sydney, Beijing, Shanghai, Mecca, Almaty, Bishkek, Munich. Uyghur communities are characterized by traditional self-organization in the form of malla, headed by elective foremen, Zhigit-beshi. Usually all communities are members of Uyghur public organizations, the uniting organization of which, in turn, is the World Uyghur Congress.

History

The process of the formation of the Uyghur ethnos was complex and lengthy. Their ancestors, the nomadic tribes of East Turkestan, played a significant role in the Hunnu state (3rd century BC - 4th centuries AD).

Mosque in traditional Uyghur style of architecture

In written sources, the ancestors of the Uighurs are mentioned since the 3rd century. n. NS. (including in the Orkhon inscriptions of the 8th century). In the III-IV centuries. The Uyghurs were part of an association, which in the Chinese dynastic chronicles was called gaogyu (literally, "tall carts"). In the V century. in Chinese sources a new name for this union appears - tele (tegreg "carriages"). A significant group of Tele tribes migrated westward to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Southeastern Europe. Those who remained in the Central Asian steppes were subordinated to the Turks and became part of their state. The main lands of the body were then in Dzungaria and Semirechye. But in 605, after the treacherous beating of several hundred Tele leaders by the Western Türkic Churyn Kagan, the leader of the Uighurs took the tribes to the Khangai Mountains, where they created a separate group called by Chinese historiographers "nine tribes" (Tokuz-Oguzes). Since 630, after the fall of the first Türkic Kaganate, the Tokuz-Oguzes act as a significant political force, the leadership within which was established for ten Uyghur tribes led by the Yaglakar clan. In the V-VIII centuries. the Uyghurs were part of the Jujan Kaganate and then the Türkic Kaganate. The process of ethnic consolidation of the Uighurs ended in the 8th century. after the collapse of the Türkic Kaganate and the formation of the Uygur early feudal state (Uygur Kaganate) on the river. Orkhon. At the head of the kaganate were kagans from the Uighur clan Yaglakar (Chinese Yao-luo-ko; 745-795). It was at this moment that Manichaeism was recognized as the official religion. In 795, the Ediz tribe came to power (795-840), which also took the name Yaglakar.

Gumilev considers this episode the coming to power of the Manichean theocracy: ... in 795, the adopted son of one of the nobles, Kutlug, was elevated to the throne, under the conditions of restricting power. “The nobles, officials and others reported: 'You, heavenly king, sit loosely on the precious throne, and you must receive an assistant who has the ability to control the measure of the sea and the mountain: ... laws and commands must be given: we must hope for heavenly mercy and favor.' In other words, the executive and judicial powers were taken away from the khan, and politics was taken under the control of heavenly mercy, "that is, the Manichaeans. The union of the tribes turned into a theocracy.

In 840, power in the kaganate returned to the Yaglakar tribe for 7 years. In the 840s, due to complex internal political and economic reasons, as well as the external invasion of the ancient Kyrgyz, the Uyghur state collapsed.

National Uyghur knives

Since its founding in 1949, the Chinese communist government in Beijing has long considered the northwest region on its vast political map the main problem area for the regime and has systematically implemented various measures to ensure complete control over this important territory.

Of the four non-China regions, three others, that is, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet, have longer and more complex historical ties with China.

Officially called Xinjiang, or New Territory, East Turkestan is known for its local population, predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. It is the fourth non-China region with the most contrived and least internal historical, ethnic, cultural and religious ties to China, making it the most volatile and stressful.

As a result, over the past seven decades in this area, there has been a protracted campaign by the Beijing government for ethnic signification, massive forced displacement of the population and the build-up of the Communist Party apparatus and Chinese military and police presence. Miles Maochun Yu(Miles Maochun Yu), professor of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, an expert in East Asian and military history.

However, in the past fifteen years alone, this protracted war for control of Xinjiang has accelerated sharply with a giant leap in its tension and brutality, demonstrating the insane urgency of the Beijing government and the inexorable determination of the Chinese communist leadership to solve the "Xinjiang problems" once and for all, he notes. ...

The signs of such a hasty final settlement with the Uyghurs are unmistakable: growing “re-education” camps for Uyghurs are set up rapidly in less than a year; mass arrests and detentions of large numbers of Uyghurs account for more than 20 percent of all ethnic minority arrests in China, with only 10 million people, or 1.5 percent of China's 1.4 billion; draconian high-tech all-weather 24/7 general electronic surveillance covering the entire Xinjiang region; the massive deployment of fully armed, reusable units of the Chinese People's Armed Police, in addition to the large corps of the PLA's regular troops;

the almost complete cutting off of Xinjiang from the international press and the Internet, as well as severe restrictions on the personal freedom of Uyghurs in travel, housing, study, religion and even courtship, since Uyghur men are prohibited from wearing long beards and women - Uyghur ethnic clothing; The few successful Muslim pilgrims who pledge their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party will be the first to wear a Beijing-issued electronic monitoring device around their necks on their way to Mecca.

Why is Xinjiang so urgent?

Above all, the recent spike in suppression in Xinjiang has been fueled by the emergence of a new understanding of security in China in the past two decades, which focuses on a perceived US-led global anti-China alliance designed to encircle and contain a burgeoning socialist China from all the periphery of China - from Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Guam and Taiwan in the north and east to Vietnam, India and Afghanistan in the southeast, southwest and west - all sides except one region, northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where US influence appears to be is the weakest or nonexistent.

Therefore, it is imperative for China to make the Xinjiang region its ultimate strategic rear, where it can withstand US-led "containment" from all sides. To this end, the "Uyghur problem" must first be resolved, since for China's survival no unrest and trouble can be allowed in the deeply rooted new Cold War, allegedly waged and led by the United States against socialist China.

To achieve this goal, the last three leaders of China Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and acting Xi Jinping have adopted this new security agenda and are engaging in hectic Xinjiang dinners and military build-up campaigns. Each of the three leaders had or has their own benchmark in the implementation of this final decision on Xinjiang.

Under Jiang in 2001, it was the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that quickly poured out China's strategic resources to secure Xinjiang against US “encirclement and containment” through an alliance with Russia and other former Soviet Central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. ...

As Jiang's SCO project demanded a swift militarization of Xinjiang, the Uyghurs faced a sudden spike in restrictions and oppression from the Chinese government, leading to a violent ethnic clash in Xinjiang in 2009 led by the next Supreme Leader Hu Jintao. In 2009, the Uyghur incident and its brutal suppression served as a prelude to the latest statement by the current Supreme Leader Xi Jinping about the complete elimination of the "Uyghur problem" in Xinjiang.

Second, Supreme Leader Xi Jinping's project, the gigantic Belt and Road Initiative valued at US $ 4-8 trillion, creates another important impetus for the Beijing government to “pacify” the Uyghur population, as Xinjiang now serves as a logistics base and connects key Belts and Roads components. Belt and Road projects start in this Uyghur region. The new Eurasian Land Bridge starts from Xinjiang, passes through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally reaches Germany. The Sino-Turkish Corridor also starts from Xinjiang; the Sino-Pakistani economic corridor looks the same.

Third, China's growing strategic partnership with Russia in an effort to form a united front against the United States also requires Beijing to quickly address the Uyghur problem as a prerequisite for a healthy and lasting Moscow-Beijing alliance.

Historically, Moscow has been the single largest contributor to and fueling the Uyghur independence movement. In its struggle against Kuomintang control over Xinjiang, the Soviet Union, as in Vladimir Lenin and later at Joseph Stalin, supported the Uighurs. In 1921, the Soviet Union formally designated the Uighurs under Chinese rule as a "non-Chinese" people belonging to the Turkic ethnic group. In 1933, Stalin supported the creation of an independent Uyghur state in Kashgar known as the First East Turkestan Republic [PVTR]. After his death as a result of the military victory of the military commander Sheng Shikai above the PVTR, the Soviet Union created in 1944 the Second East Turkestan Republic [VVTR], which was based in Ili, Xinjiang.

In 1949, Stalin betrayed the Second Eastern Turkestan Republic by agreeing to Mao Zedong's demand to subordinate the VVTR to the newly created People's Republic of China, backed by Moscow, and held peace talks between the leaders of the VVTR and Mao Zedong in 1950. But on the way to Beijing, the entire VVTR leadership team died in a plane crash over the Soviet Union, thus saving both Moscow and Beijing from the worry of independence-oriented Uyghur elites for decades to come.

But in the tumultuous eastern relations between Beijing and Moscow after Stalin's death, Soviet leaders, from Khrushchev before Brezhnev, used the East Turkestan independence movement and Soviet Turkological studies as weapons of "ideological warfare" against Chinese communist infidels, causing Beijing nightmares. In the post-Soviet era, Uyghur studies of the Russian intelligentsia and the publication of Turkological works about the Uyghurs and their aspirations for independence have witnessed a revival.

Keeping in mind Moscow's past penchant for using the Uyghur issue as a wedge and a bargaining chip in an increasingly existential bilateral relationship between Beijing and Moscow, China's leaders are wasting no time to eliminate the source of such a scenario, the recently reborn Uyghur independence movement, but now with a religious twist. known as the East Turkestan Islamic Republic [VTIR].

Fourth, the current surge of "Uyghur pacification" in Xinjiang also coincides with the rapid surge of Chinese ultranationalist chauvinism. Since its inception in late 2012, Xi Jinping has championed Chinese confidence in the expression of national Khan pride and racial purity.

November 8, 2017 President Trump and his wife Melania visited the Forbidden City in Beijing. Xi Jinping explained to Mr. Trump how to define a "Chinese person": a Chinese person, according to Xi, is "a descendant of a dragon with black hair and yellow skin." Such deeply rooted cultural prejudices are found throughout the country. At the same time, Uyghurs, who do not have black hair or yellow skin and who have unique non-Chinese facial features and can be easily identified, are often denied check-in at a hotel and denied train or plane tickets. Uyghurs cannot live as free people anywhere in the People's Republic, as mandated by the government at all levels. In other words, the entire Uyghur ethnic group voluntarily submits to the observational views of the predominant Chinese nationwide.

How successful“ appeasement“ UyghursWhaleeatin Xinjiang?

It is quite striking that China does not face a global outcry and outrage proportional to the scale and intensity of such "ethnic pacification." But this is not surprising when you consider the following:

First, the Chinese government took advantage of the US-led global war on terror following the 9/11 attacks and, in effect, led Washington to declare the negligible East Turkestan Independence Movement a terrorist group. For political expediency, Washington reluctantly accepted China's demand, although it called on Beijing for restraint and religious freedom in its pursuit of these "Uyghur terrorists" seeking independence. But Beijing ignored the call and censored US warnings. As a result, China has never shown restraint as the leader of the free world has received an anti-terrorist justification.

Second, the Uyghurs do not have a strong enough religious connection to provoke a pan-Islamic counter-argument against the suppression of Beijing. Predominantly Sunni Muslim, Uyghurs do not share a symbiotic relationship with the Muslim world of the Middle East in the ongoing political and religious wars.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which has central political and religious authority in the Vatican, they do not have a central religious authority to voice the plight of the Uyghurs and provide support at their request.

Third, China is cleverly using economic and financial packages to silence the Arab and Islamic worlds that support the Uyghurs. Despite the suppression, no Arab or Islamic government dared openly criticize China for draconian measures in Xinjiang.

The drive to create large numbers of "re-education" concentration camps for Uyghurs, the systematic screening and arrest of Uyghur intellectuals on campuses and schoolyards, the detention and arrest of lawyers, businessmen and other members of the Uyghur elite, an ominous increase in the number of new crematoria in Xinjiang are all indicative of genocide. or even the holocaust in action. The United Nations and virtually all international human rights organizations have issued a strong warning of this possibility in the People's Republic of China. Will the 20th century pogroms find their evil twin in the 21st century? Let's hope not.

The Uyghurs are an ancient ethnic group that has lived in the North of China since ancient times, their main place of residence is Xinjiang, but they also live in Hunan, Beijing, Guangzhou and other places. There are very few Uyghurs outside of China. The self-name "Uighurs" means "rallying", "unification". In ancient Chinese historical annals there are different variations of the name of the Uighurs: "Huihu", "Huihe", "Uighurs". The official name "Uighurs" was adopted by the government of Xinjiang province in 1935.

Uighurs speak the Uyghur language, which belongs to the Turkic language family, profess Islam. Their places of residence are mainly in the regions of Southern Xinjiang: Kashi, Khotan, Aksu, as well as Urumqi and the Ili district in Northern Xinjiang. According to the 1988 census, the number of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is 8.1394 million people, 47.45% of the total population of Xinjiang, in rural areas the share of Uyghurs is 84.47%, in rural townships 6.98%, in cities 8 , 55%.

Uyghur ancestors and evolution of development

The question of the origin of the Uyghur nationality is rather complicated. The ancient peoples took part in it: the Saki (East Iranian language group), Yuezhi, Qiang (tribes of the Old Tibetan language group who lived on the northern spurs of the Kunlun), and finally, the Han people who lived in the Turfan depression. In the 40s of the 8th century, Uyghur tribes engaged in nomadic cattle breeding on the Mongol plateau migrated to the territory of present-day Xinjiang. In total, three migration flows can be traced. In Xinjiang, migrants settled in the Yanqi, Gaochang (Turpan) and Jimsar regions. Gradually, the Uyghurs settled in the vast expanses of southern Xinjiang. This was the first stage in the formation of the Uyghur nationality on the basis of mixing with other ethnic groups, as well as an important period in the popularization of the Uyghur language. In the wall paintings of the Baiziklik Cave Temples of the Thousand Buddhas, there are images of Uyghurs. The Uyghurs of those times had pronounced features of the Mongoloid race. Today, the Uyghurs, along with black hair and eyes, have facial contours and skin color characteristic of the mixed yellow and white race. Moreover, there are differences in the appearance of the Uighurs living in different regions. The Uyghurs living in the Kashgar-Kucha region have fair skin and thick facial hair, which brings them closer to the white race; the Uighurs of Khotan have dark skin, which brings these Uighurs closer to the Tibetans; the Turfan Uyghurs have the same skin color as the Han people living in Gansu and Qinghai. All this testifies to the fact that in the process of ethnic formation the Uyghurs have experienced processes of mixing with other nationalities. The Mongols also belong to the ancestors of the Uighurs by blood, a large influx of which to Xinjiang took place during the period of the Chagatay and Yarkand khanates.

The ancestors of the Uyghurs were followers of shamanism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Buddhism. The abundance of Buddhist religious structures that have survived to this day: cave temples, monasteries and pagodas suggests that in ancient times Buddhism dominated among different faiths. In the middle of the 10th century, Islamism, brought from Central Asia, spread in the Karakhan Khanate. Islamism first penetrated the Kucha. In the middle of the 16th century, during the existence of the Yarkand Khanate, Islamism supplanted Buddhism and became the dominant religion in the Turfan and Hami regions. This is how a historical change of religions took place in Xinjiang.

During the period of the Yarkand Khanate, the Uighurs lived mainly in southern Xinjiang - the area between the Tianshan and Kunlun ranges. During the period of the Dzungar Khanate, the Uighurs began to settle in the valley of the Ili River, where they plowed up virgin lands. But the number of Uyghurs resettled was small. In general, until the beginning of the Qing dynasty, the Uighurs mainly concentrated in southern Xinjiang, and from here they moved to other places. For example, the current Uyghurs living in Urumqi are descendants of those Uyghurs who migrated here from Turpan in 1864. At that time, a resident of Dihua (since 1955 Urumqi) Taoming (a Hui by nationality) opposed the Qing rule and proclaimed the establishment of an independent government. The residents of Turfan supported the rebels and sent an armed detachment to help them in Dikhua. After some time, the Kokand military leader Agub captured Dihua and Guniin (now the Urumqi region) and organized a recruitment of recruits in South Xinjiang to replenish his army. Thus, many Uighurs from South Xinjiang migrated to Dihua and settled for permanent residence. In addition, already during the years of the Republic of China (1911-1949), many Uighur traders and workers moved to Northern Xinjiang. Until now, the number of Uyghurs living in South Xinjiang is much larger than their number in North Xinjiang.

Political history of the Uyghurs

In different periods of history, the Uighurs created their own local power structures. But they all maintained close ties with the central government of the Chinese Empire.

At the beginning of the Tang dynasty, the Uyghur ruler inherited the title of governor of the Gobi and created the Uyghur Kaganate. The kagans (supreme rulers) received from the hands of the Chinese emperor a letter of appointment and a state seal, in addition, one of the kagans was linked by a matrimonial alliance with the Tang dynasty. The rulers of the Uyghur Kaganate helped the Tanam to pacify internal troubles among the tribes of the Western Territories and protect the borders.

In the 10th century, there were three state formations on the territory of the Western Territories: the Gaochang Khanate, the Karakhan Khanate and the state of Keriya. All of them paid tribute to the emperors of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and Liao (907-1125). In the 16-17 centuries, there were close political and economic ties between the Yarkand Khanate in Xinjiang and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

In 1696, the Khami bek Abdul, first of all, opposed the Dzungar administration, which then dominated the southern and northern spurs of the Tianshan, and announced the recognition of the power of the Qing dynasty. Abdul's descendants invariably received letters of title and seals from the Chinese emperor, testifying to the recognition of their powers by the central government of China.

Thus, the ground was gradually prepared for the inclusion of the Western Territories in the map of Chinese possessions. After the Qing troops defeated the troops of the Dzungar Khanate in 1755, the process of recognizing the supremacy of the central Chinese government by the leaders of the kingdoms in the Western Territories accelerated. Following the example of the Han Dynasty, which established the position of governor of the "spirit" in the Western Territories, and the Tang Dynasty, which established the military-administrative districts in Anxi and Beitin, the Qing government established in 1762 the post of Ili Governor-General - the highest military-administrative rank in the Western Territories ... As for the local government in the areas where the Uyghurs live, the traditional feudal-bureaucratic system of beks (feudal lords who held official posts, inherited from father to son) survived until the end of the Qing dynasty.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Chinese nation was going through a severe crisis, and class contradictions sharply escalated. Against this background, the vices of the feudal-bureaucratic system of the bekdom and the system of the paramilitary governorship established in Xinjiang by the Chinese government were becoming more and more apparent. Peasant uprisings became more frequent, religious leaders, taking advantage of the ensuing turmoil, began to preach for the "holy war for Islam." The troops of the Central Asian Kokand Khanate (a feudal state created by the Uzbeks in the 18th century in the Fergana Valley) under the leadership of Khan Aguba (1825 - 1877) invaded Xinjiang from outside. The Uzbeks captured Kashi and the South Xinjiang region. Tsarist Russia occupied Inin (Kuldja). Troubled times have come for Xinjiang. Only in 1877, under the pressure of the insurgent population and the attacks of the Qing troops, the interventionist government of Aguba fell, in the northern and southern regions of Xinjiang, the power of the Qing government was again restored, which in 1884 proclaimed Xinjiang a Chinese province.

The Uyghurs have played an important role in resisting external aggressors in modern history.

In the 20-30s of the 19th century, the Uighurs repulsed the armed intrigues of the troops of Changir and Mohammed Yusup, who acted with the support of the Kokand Khan; in the 60s, the Uighurs drove out the Russian consul of the Ili and Tarbagatai districts and Russian merchants because they grossly violated local laws and provoked incidents in which there were victims among the local population; In the 70s, the Uighurs repulsed the intervention of the troops of Agub Khan and supported the Qing troops in the restoration of Chinese power in Xinjiang. They also contributed to the return in 1881 to the bosom of the homeland of Kulja from the Russian occupation. During the years of the Republic of China, the Uighurs resolutely fought against Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism, defending the unity of the Motherland and national cohesion. During the years of the People's Republic of China, in particular after the formation of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Uyghurs act as an important stabilizing force in the political life of China and Xinjiang.

Social life and economics

Uyghurs are sedentary, their main occupation is agriculture. Most of the Uyghurs live in rural areas. In the middle of the 17th century, the Dzungars rose - one of the four Oirat tribes in Western Mongolia. Having established their domination in Xinjiang, the Dzungars resettled part of the Uighurs living in South Xinjiang to the north, to the Urumqi region, forcing them to plow up virgin lands. In the past, the Uyghurs were engaged in the cultivation of agricultural crops in an extensive way, without applying fertilizers, without selecting seeds, without worrying about restoring soil fertility, used water from irrigation ditches in unlimited quantities for irrigation. But even under these conditions, the Uyghur peasants have made considerable progress in crop production.

Uyghurs live in oases in the middle of the desert, their villages were formed as they settled without a specific plan. In addition to working in the field, the villagers certainly plant trees and shrubs around their homes; fruit growing and melons are widely spread. Raisins are prepared from grapes by drying in the open air, dried fruit from apricots, and also dried apricot kernels. Well-known products are Khotan peaches and walnuts, Pisan and Kargalyk pomegranates, Badan apricots, Atush figs, Kuchan apricots, Turfan seedless grapes, Kurlya pears, melons grown in Faizabad, Megati and Shanshan, Ili apples, sea buckthorn, etc. Xinjiang is an important cotton growing region of national importance. The Uyghurs are excellent cotton growers. Living in an arid climate with very little rainfall, the Uighurs have learned to build underground water pipelines and kariz wells, in which water comes from rivers. Over the years of people's power, especially during the period of reforms and an open course (since 1978), a galaxy of young specialists has grown in Xinjiang, new trends have come to the agricultural sector, new agro and zootechnics, mechanization has been widely introduced. All this led to a new upsurge in the agriculture of the region.

The diet of Uyghur peasants is dominated by meat from small ruminants, dairy products and fruits. The inhabitants of the cities are engaged in the artisan field, are engaged in petty trade. Among the crafts developed are tanning, blacksmithing, and food processing. Vendors sell fruit, prepare barbecue, bake flat cakes, pies and other types of traditional food. The products of Uyghur artisans are distinguished by great elegance. Khotanese carpets and silk, miniature daggers from Yangisar, embroidered skullcaps and copper products produced in Kashi are in great demand.

Folk customs

Modern Uighurs are very different from their ancestors: the Huihu, who believed in Manichaeism, or the Gaochan Uighurs, who believed in Buddhism. Islamism is the dominant religion today. At the early stage of the spread of Islam, the Uighurs belonged to the Sufi sect, but today the majority of the population are Sunnis, in addition, there are adherents of the Yichan sect, which requires renunciation of worldly pleasures and wearing beads.

Marriages are concluded exclusively between supporters of the same faith; the marriage of a girl to a non-believer is strictly condemned. There are marriages between relatives and early marriages. Traditionally, the decisive factor in choosing a groom (bride) is the will of the parents. Today, however, the right to marry for love is officially recognized, but it is still believed that any decent groom should be able to present the bride's family with a rich kalym, otherwise he will be charged with underestimating the merits of the bride. Both among the gifts of the groom and in the dowry of the bride, a prayer rug is an indispensable attribute. The act of marriage must be confirmed by a priest - akhun. The newlyweds eat a cake soaked in water, to which salt is added, the friends of the groom and the bride's friends perform dances and songs. Today the festivities on the occasion of the wedding last one day, while before, they went out for at least three days. According to Uyghur custom, in the event of the death of an older brother, the widow does not remain in the husband's family, but can return to the parental home or marry another. But if the wife dies, the widower can marry his sister-in-law. The Uyghurs are very tolerant of divorce and remarriage; in case of divorce, the divorcing parties share their property equally. However, custom forbids a married woman to file for divorce on her own initiative. Although recently, there have been changes.

The Uyghur family is based on the marriage relationship between husband and wife, children who have reached the age of majority and start a family are separated from their parents. The youngest son continues to live in his parents' house, so that there is someone to look after the elderly and take them on their last journey. In addition, there is a custom according to which the son, if he is the only male child in the family, is not separated from his parents. At the birth of a child, the woman in labor remains on bed rest for 40 days. The baby is placed in a cradle in which it is convenient to rock the baby. To assign a name to the newborn, a special ceremony is arranged, a male child at the age of 5-7 is circumcised, and this operation is timed to coincide with the odd month of the spring or autumn season. Children of both sexes, as well as the wife in the event of the death of the husband, have the right to inherit, but the daughter can inherit property in the amount of only half of the inheritance due to the son. I must say that these customs today are no longer as absolute as they were in the past. Uyghurs attach great importance to maintaining relationships with relatives. Relatives are divided into direct, close and distant. But even in dealing with indirect relatives, they resort to such names as "father", "mother", "brother", "sister", etc. It is customary to provide mutual support between relatives. Personal nomination consists of a name and a patronymic, without a surname, but the name of the ancestor (grandfather) is mentioned. It is the custom of the Uyghurs to honor the elderly and old, they are greeted and escorted with respect, and they give way. Greeting each other, the Uighurs put the palm of their right hand to their chest.

The funeral custom includes the surrender of the deceased's remains to the earth. The deceased is placed with his head to the west, as a rule, for a period of no more than three days, and the akhun prays over him. Before burial, the corpse is wrapped in a white cloth in several layers: three layers for men and five layers for women, in the mosque the relatives of the deceased bring the last offerings, after which the funeral procession proceeds to the cemetery. The grave is dug in a quadrangular shape, most often in a cave, the deceased is placed with his head to the west, the akhun utters the words of the prayer, and after that the entrance to the cave is walled up. As a rule, people of other faiths are not allowed to enter the cemetery.

Today the Uyghurs use a generally accepted calendar, but the onset of some holidays is still determined by the old calendar. The beginning of the year according to the Uyghur calendar is the Eid al-Adha, the Small New Year falls on the "zhoutszytsze". According to Muslim custom, one month of the year should be devoted to fasting. This month, you can eat only before sunrise and after sunset. The end of Lent falls on "zhoutszytsze" ("kaizhaitsze"). Now you can eat well. 70 days after "kaizhaitsze" comes the New Year (Eid al-Adha), when a lamb is slaughtered in every family, they arrange a New Year's party and go to each other with congratulations. In the period of the spring solstice, they celebrate "nuvuzhoutszytsze" - the arrival of spring. But this holiday does not belong to Muslim holidays, and in our time it is rarely celebrated.

The architecture of the Uyghurs is marked by Arab characteristics. Outstanding architectural monuments are the tomb of Khoja Apoki (Kashi), the Etigart Mosque, and the Imin Minaret (Turfan). Residential buildings are built from wood and clay. The courtyard is surrounded by an adobe wall, the walls of the house, which are the main supporting structures, are also made adobe, wooden beams are placed on the edges of the walls to support the roof. In Khotan, the walls of houses are built of clay, which is kneaded with added redwood chips. The roof of the house is made flat, fruits are dried on it, etc. In addition to the residential building, there is a grape trellis and an orchard in the yard, the house has a door, but there are no windows we are used to, light enters through the window in the ceiling. Niches are made in the walls of the house, where household items are stored, the bed is replaced by an adobe bed (kan) covered with a mat or carpet, carpets are also hung on the walls. On cold days, the house is heated by the heat emanating from the wall under which the fire is made. Doors in a Uyghur house never face west. Uyghurs living in modern stone-brick houses use modern furniture, but still love to decorate the room with carpets.

Uyghur cuisine is rich in various dishes, cooked by baking, boiling, stewing. Spices are put into food, especially the spice "Parthian anise", in Uyghur "zizhan". The main bread product is baked fermented dough cakes with added onion and butter. A popular drink is milk tea. Uyghur pilaf, whole-fried lamb, sausage, pies, steamed pies with filling, crispy bagels, etc. are widely known. The most delicious dish is lamb shish kebab seasoned with anise, salt and pepper. Uyghur-style kebab has become a popular dish throughout China.

An integral part of the clothing of the Uighurs, both men and women, is a headdress; skull-caps, beautifully embroidered with gold or silver threads, are especially popular. Casual men's clothing is a long-length chepan, which is sewn with wide sleeves, without a collar and without fasteners. It is worn, wrapped on the side and belted with a sash. Nowadays, Uighurs living in cities began to dress in a modern way, men wear jackets and trousers, women wear dresses. When choosing cosmetic creams and lipstick, Uyghur women prefer products based on natural plant materials. Developed by a Xinjiang company, Osman brand eyebrow tint has been quality tested and marketed in China and abroad.

Culture and art

The Uyghur culture is deeply rooted in the past. During the time of the Uyghur Kaganate, the Uyghurs used the writing "Juni" (Turkic language group). It is in "Juni" that the stele "Moyancho" is written. Later, syllabic writing came into use, using the letters "suteven", they wrote on it vertically from top to bottom, from right to left. At the time of the Chagatai Khanate, the Uyghurs adopted the Arabic alphabet, giving the writing system, which received the name of the ancient Uyghur. The Kashgar pronunciation was considered common. The alphabet consisted of letters, written from right to left. In the 19th century, they switched to the modern Uyghur script. Modern Uyghur has 8 vowels and 24 consonants. In the 11th century, the Uyghur poet Yusup from the city of Balasaguni (Karakhan Khanate) published the didactic poem "Knowledge that gives happiness", the poet Aplinchotele wrote the idyllic poem "There is such a place." In the Chagatay period, the love poem "Laila and Matain" and the poem of the poet Abdujeim Nizari "Zhebiya and Saddin" appeared. Modern Uyghur fiction and poetry developed already in the 20th century.

Colorfully dance and song creativity of the Uighurs. Back in the days of the Yarkand Khanate, a musical suite "Twelve Mukams" was created, which includes 340 fragments: ancient tunes, oral folk tales, music for dances, etc. The Kashsky Mukam is especially large scale, which includes 170 pieces of music and 72 pieces of instrumental music. They can be performed continuously for 24 hours. Musical instruments of the Uyghurs include flute, trumpet, sona, balaman, sator, zhezek, dutar, tambur, chewapu (a kind of balalaika), kalun, and yangqing. Percussion instruments include a leather-coated drum and a metal drum. Uyghur dances can be divided into two categories: dancing accompanied by chanting and dancing to music. The popular dance style "sanem", which is distinguished by a free choice of movements, is performed both by one dancer, and in a pair, as well as by a whole ensemble. "Syatyana" is a cheerful dance performed by an unlimited number of artists. In this dance, the performers, raising their hands up, turn and swing with their hands to the beat of small dance steps, in addition, the shoulders of the artists make characteristic movements so that the neck remains motionless. In addition, circus acts are popular: tightrope walkers on a steel cable suspended at a high altitude, balancing act with a wheel, etc. Emperor Qianlong (Din. Qing) wrote with admiration about Uighurs - rope walkers. In 1997, Uyghur tightrope walker - a native of Kashgar - Adil Ushur crossed the Yangtze River on a steel cable, having entered a record in the Guinness Book.

Under what conditions do interethnic conflicts arise and by what means to get rid of them? I talked a lot on this topic with my teacher Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev, and also worked closely on domestic and foreign research, especially American. And, according to my inner feeling, I have reached a standard - I do not know anyone in the world who, like me, would comprehend the problems of interethnic and interethnic relations from the point of view of a subjective understanding of history. There are similar interpretations, especially among creatively thinking Marxists and the developers of the concept of nation-building, but the bulk of them confuses the natural and cultural “ethnos” (people) with the “nation”, although a nation is not an ethnos at all, but a form of self-organization of grassroots subjectivity (first of all, the "third estate", "petty bourgeoisie", "middle class"). There are no “feudal nations”, since in a feudal society property and power belong to the upper classes, usually headed by the monarch, and there are no “socialist nations” based on some “public” property, since “public property” is usually usurped by the “leader” and the nomenklatura and crushes grassroots private self-sufficient property owners-subjects - and there are only bourgeois nations. And when the Great French bourgeois revolution took place, the rebellious "third estate", having taken the Bastille, realized itself as a "nation" and began to chant in the Nation square! Nation!

The communist leadership of the PRC, apparently, did not learn the proper lessons from last year's interethnic unrest in Tibet, when the Tibetans rose up against the dominance of newcomers Chinese, primarily against the Han "third estate", which monopolized trade and services in Lhasa and other countries. And now the Uighurs have risen, unable to compete with the newcomer Han business. And the Uighurs can be understood when they smashed the Han banks, shops and shops and overturned and set fire to the cars of the Han people and beat and killed the oncoming Han people. It's boiling! How could this nightmare have been avoided, not led to an explosion?

The answer is in the similar experience of Singapore and Malaysia, in which newcomer Han entrepreneurs also monopolized small business and thereby infringed on the interests of the lower Malay-Muslim subjectivity, which, forty to thirty years ago, also caused bloody interethnic pogroms. But in Singapore and Malaysia there were then wise leaders-modernizers - Chinese Li Kuan Yew and Malay Mahathir bin Mohamad, respectively, who found a recipe for curing interethnic strife. And now in these two prosperous neighboring countries - peace and grace. And although Deng Xiaoping greatly respected Lee Kuan Yew and considered Singapore to be a kind of "socio-economic laboratory" in which methods of rapid economic growth and effective national policy were tested, and sent his officials to the Singapore guru to record all his innovations and advice, - his methods of overcoming interethnic conflicts were never comprehended and mastered in Beijing. The method is simple - to forcefully cultivate a "critical mass" of lower subjectivity in more backward ethnic societies, to carry out their advanced development. It resembles "Lenin's national policy", but with an emphasis not so much on general socialization as on targeted subjectification. Both Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir bin Mohamad admit in their books that they used the experience not so much of the USSR as the United States - an "affirmative action program" aimed at nurturing a massive African American and Hispanic "middle class", which ultimately blocked interracial antagonism in America and allowed Barack Obama to become the first black American president.

As a result, the Chinese in Singapore, under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, established normal relations with Muslim Malays, and the Malays in neighboring Malaysia, under the leadership of Mahathir bin Mohamad, curbed the Chinese extremists and created a more or less cohesive prosperous multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. The ethnic Chinese, Lee Kuan Yew, was concerned, for example, with the lagging of Malay schoolchildren behind Han students in academic performance and IQ. The Singaporean Han people used to think of the Muslim Malays as stupid and therefore incapable of business, the Malays responded with hatred, like the Tibetans or Uighurs do today. Lee Kuan Yew understood that if such relations between communities continue, then a prosperous state cannot be built. We need to bring the Malays up to the Han level! He gathered the authorities of the Malay community to speak with the government on this issue. We decided to organize individual lessons with teachers for the most capable Malay schoolchildren, to allocate quotas for Malay students in universities in Singapore, the United States and Europe. In addition, quotas were established for Malays in the management of Han companies. And they resettled the Malays and the Han people in new comfortable houses interspersed so as not to form compact ethnic enclaves. However, everyone can read how interethnic inequalities were smoothed out in Singapore and Malaysia, since the books by Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir bin Mohamad are abundantly presented on Runet websites. But the Peking leaders failed to learn from their wise fellow tribesman Li Kuan Yew the socio-economic methods of preventing interethnic enmity - and failed both in Tibet and in Xinjiang!

Previously, the Communist Party of China pursued a completely international policy, as did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its time. The task of general socialization was put at the forefront, and the solution of the equally important task of subjectization was either not envisaged at all, or was postponed for an indefinite future. However, during the gradual liberalization of society in the USSR ("perestroika") and in the PRC, it was not possible to avoid outbreaks of interethnic strife. What is the political mistake of the Soviet and Chinese communists?

Under the harsh administrative-command regime in the USSR and the PRC, thanks to repression and equalization, interethnic calm and grace also reigned in poverty, in the 1950s-1960s I walked alone on foot in the Caucasus and Central Asia, spent the night in saklyas and yurts, did not feel any hostility rather friendliness. The communists who retained their passionarity at that time could arouse the enthusiasm of the builders of utopia and consistently suppressed Russian "great-power chauvinism" and local "bourgeois nationalism", and relations between Russians and ethnic groups ("nationalities") seemed to be harmonized, and the most capable ethnics were promoted to universities and to the leadership. the rest lived in equality, albeit collective-farm and proletarian, and in their thoughts they did not keep striving for the isolation of their ethnic group and its liberation from the power of the center. Even in bookstores, including in Ukraine, books in local languages ​​were in bulk, no one bought them, everyone took books in Russian, instinctively trying to socialize as soon as possible in the environment of national culture and politics. In short, the socialization of ethnic groups was stimulated (free education, health care, etc.), and for the time being everything was in order.

But with the subjectification came a bobble. In the USSR, during the years of "perestroika", timid attempts were made to forcefully cultivate grassroots subjectivity through the development of the cooperative movement, while in the PRC, thanks to Deng Xiaoping's "four modernizations" youth led to the tragic events in Tiananmen Square in May-June 1989). On the outskirts, in the Tibetan and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regions, a gap arose between the expanding Sino-Han trade and entrepreneurial entity and the local indigenous population, which had little to oppose it. After all, the emerging Han capital, coming to Tibet or Xinjiang, deliberately surpassed local entrepreneurship, and a typical situation of "internal colonialism" emerged. And the Chinese communists, lulled by reports on the successes of universal socialization among national minorities, rested on their laurels and did not work out anything similar to an “affirmative action program” for Tibetans and Uighurs (I, for example, had never heard of it). And they pay dearly for it. And it is unclear whether they will understand their mistake.

And on Sunday, July 5, 2009, the Uyghur youth staged a pogrom of the Han people in the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Alexander Lomanov reports in the article "Bloody toys: The pogrom in Urumqi provoked via the Internet" (Vremya novostei, Moscow, July 7, 2009, No. 118/2242 /, pp. 1, 5):

“Yesterday, the capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China was recovering from unprecedented bloody inter-ethnic riots that erupted in Urumqi on Sunday evening. The authorities reported the death of at least 140 people, and another 828 were injured. The thugs burned 190 buses, ten taxis, two police cars, destroyed and looted 203 shops and 14 private houses. Several hundred participants in the riots were arrested, the police are looking for 90 of the most dangerous instigators.

According to eyewitness accounts, a crowd of young Uyghurs began to gather in central Urumqi at about half past six pm local time on Sunday. The first pogroms began at about eight o'clock, when about a thousand demonstrators armed with knives, sticks, bricks and stones began to march through the city. Their main target was the Han people - that is, the ethnic Chinese. People's Hospital, the largest in Urumqi, reported that it received 291 casualties (17 later died), among them 233 Han and 29 Uyghurs, the rest belonged to other ethnic minorities of multinational Xinjiang.

According to the official version, the wave of violence directed against the Han people was provoked by foreign Uyghur organizations seeking to secede Xinjiang from China. Nowadays, ethnic Uyghurs professing Islam make up less than half of the 20 million population of the XUAR. In the two millionth capital of XUAR, the share of ethnic Chinese exceeds 70%. Some Uighurs are unhappy with the constant influx of immigrants from China. Uyghur émigré organizations say police opened "indiscriminate fire" on a "peaceful demonstration" demanding an investigation into a recent incident in southern China that killed Uyghurs.

Xinjiang Prime Minister Nur Bekri said yesterday morning that riots in Urumqi erupted following a conflict between Xinjiang migrant workers and local workers at a toy factory in Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province, on the night of June 26. It all started with information on a local website that six young men from Xinjiang had "raped two innocent girls" right at the factory.

An interethnic conflict erupted, two Uighurs were killed, 118 people were injured. Police said Tuesday they had arrested the man who sparked the rape, a former factory worker named Zhu allegedly "falsified information to express dissatisfaction" that he was unable to find a new job after being fired.

It is noteworthy that the conflict took place several thousand kilometers from Xinjiang - in the opposite corner of China, in the economically developed southeast, which attracts foreign investment like a magnet (the export toy factory belongs to a Hong Kong businessman). The Chinese authorities have called on local entrepreneurs to actively hire workers from less developed Xinjiang to give residents of the national outskirts the opportunity to receive higher wages. In May, the management of a toy factory in Xinjiang hired 800 people, but local workers seem to have received the guests without enthusiasm.

The head of government of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Nur Bekri, said that the events in the south of the country were used by "foreign hostile forces" seeking to stir up unrest and undermine ethnic unity and social stability in Xinjiang. Authorities have announced that the émigré World Uyghur Congress, led by 62-year-old Uyghur woman Rebiya Kadeer, is behind the violence in Urumqi. She did business in China and was arrested in 1999 on charges of undermining national security. In an effort to improve relations with Washington, the Chinese authorities released her on bail in March 2005, after which Ms. Qadir went to the United States.

Now the PRC authorities claim that they have recently recorded her telephone conversations with interlocutors inside China. Rebiya Kadyr allegedly called on like-minded people to “be brave” and “do something great”.

Uyghur nationalists began spreading calls for a protest in Urumqi on the Internet last Saturday. The speed of response and the tragic nature of the consequences have shown that modern means of communication can turn into a dangerous instrument of destabilizing China - nationalist sentiments among young people are so strong that even a small spark threatens bloodshed. The authorities cut off internet access in Xinjiang yesterday. Andrei Karneev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, told Vremya novostei: “For experts, the scale of the incident came as a surprise, although there have been reports of incidents in Xinjiang for many years. This story serves as a warning that not only mass protests against the corruption of local authorities are possible in China, but also dangerous ethnic clashes fraught with escalation of emotions. "

According to the VN expert, the topic of the events in Urumqi occupied an important place in Chinese Internet blogs: “The Han people openly express their hostile, dismissive attitude towards the Uighurs, call them“ thieves ”and“ criminals ”. However, the Uyghurs and Xinjiang peoples have also accumulated their reasons for discontent over the years and decades - they feel that in their own land they become marginalized as the presence of Han Chinese grows. These events showed that the level of interethnic harmony turned out to be very low and this problem cannot be solved only through economic recovery ”.

A similar surge in interethnic hostility occurred in March 2008 in another ethnic autonomous region in China, Tibet. Then the riots in Lhasa began with a demonstration of Tibetans in memory of the anniversary of the anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, the defeat of which led to the flight to India of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. A few days later, riots and pogroms began in Lhasa, directed against ethnic Chinese - primarily traders - and their property. The authorities had to restore order by force, killing 22 people, including a policeman. Beijing called those events a "conspiracy" of supporters of Tibetan independence.

However, on the eve of last year's Olympics, the Chinese authorities named the Uyghur separatist fighters as the main threat to security. In March 2008, authorities said they had prevented a terrorist attack on board a passenger plane flying from Urumqi to Beijing - a young Uyghur woman with a Pakistani passport carried a flammable liquid on board and tried to set it on fire in the toilet. And in August, a couple of days before the opening of the Olympic Games, two militants attacked a police station in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar, killing 17 people. "

MY COMMENT: If you take the subjective position of an "honest broker", then what advice can you give to Xinjiang people? Of course, there was a surge not in Uyghur nationalism, but in Uyghur pre-subject ethnozoologism. And the pogrom-ethnozoologists must be suppressed, if not with absolute, but at least with reasonable ruthlessness. People are so arranged that sometimes you have to kill hundreds to save hundreds of thousands. So, in no case should the rioters be allowed to descend. Surprisingly, I get the impression that the Chinese state security organs showed themselves unsatisfactorily, which did not even manage to introduce a network of their agents into the Uyghur underground, which was undoubtedly responsible for the riots. How can you run a state without engaging in operational prevention ?!

As for the strategy of harmonizing interethnic relations in the multi-ethnic society of Xinjiang, there is no need to reinvent the wheel - you just need to adopt the successful experience of the United States, Singapore and Malaysia. Read textbooks by such gurus of modern modernization policy in multi-ethnic countries as Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian leader Mahathir bin Mohamad. Han Chinese business with Aboriginal people is the best cure for inequalities and accompanying frustrations. I hate empty calls for "friendship of peoples"! But if the right to bank signature of any firm in the areas of compact residence of ethnic groups will be possessed by two - one from the ethnic group and the other from the representatives of the core ethnic group (Uyghur and Chinese) - then, on the one hand, the dominance of more advanced Han people is excluded, and on the other hand, it grows ahead of time. Uyghur grassroots subjectivity. This was done in Singapore and Malaysia and partly in the United States. And here in Russia in the national republics it is also advisable to apply this rule of two different ethnic bank signatures. For example, if a company is registered in Chechnya, then one signature is a Chechen, and the other is a Russian (or a Jew, German, Yakut, Chukchi). Then, willy-nilly, the Russians in Chechnya will not be outcasts, but equal (at least formally, but this is not bad) business partners. The recipe is universal and has already worked both in the United States and in the modernized Southeast Asia. What is worse in this regard, the PRC and the Russian Federation?

Good day.

Seeing that the question is in the header of the project and unsatisfied with the answers of people not related to this ethnic group, I would like to make their own corrections; for the sake of forming a holistic and reasonable answer to the question: "In what position is the ancient Turkic people, who fell under the expansion of the Manchus in the 18th century?"

I will not hide the fact that some formulations and assumptions of the defendants caused me a slight euphoria. Why Catherine, who has an appearance characteristic of the Baikal anthropological type, can identify Kazakhs and Uighurs? Comparing the Turanids and the Fergana-Pamir race is the same as choosing olive oil or vegetable oil.

Uyghurs are a mixture of Mongoloid and Caucasoid races

A mixture of Mongoloid and Caucasoid races are the Turanids or, in other words, the South Siberian race.

Like the Kazakhs, the Uighurs have a very motley appearance. Having in the family the village of Malika; sisters Bizhan and Aigul; cousins ​​- Arman and Talgat; sary-Kazakh (Kazakh-blond with freckles; to be more precise: red-haired Kazakh) Almaty; niece Said; nephews - Janibek and Yerlan. And you can't say that we are blood relatives; our appearance is different: someone looks like a Turanid; the other looks like a chosonida. Once or twice while communicating with the Kazakhs, I had to hear that the Uighurs are darker than the Kazakhs. I personally know a mixed Uighur (mother is Russian) from Almaty (Kazakhstan); 50% of Russian blood failed to radically correct the difference between purebred Uyghurs and half-breeds. Yes, he is lighter than his father, only now he looks like a Kazakh (without foreign impurities).

The southern sub-ethnoses (Kashgharts, Khotans, Atush, Yarkands) mostly belong to the Caucasian race of the Pamir-Fergana type, the Lobnors, Turfans and Kumuls are Mongoloid and mixed, Kuldzhins, Aksu and Kuchar of the mixed type.

The anthropological differences of the Uyghur subethnos are explained by the fact that historically the northern regions were more often in contact with the Mongoloid peoples, in contrast to the southern ones. Of the southern Uyghurs, a pronounced Mongoloidity is inherent in the small subethnos of the Pulurians, which is associated with the Tibetan origin of this group of Uyghurs, as well as the Dolans and Katagans living south of Kashgar and descending from the Mongol tribes

Like the Kazakhs, the Uyghurs are divided into subethnos (in Uyghur yurts). There are a lot of them and they differ, but not so much as, for example, the Kazan Tatar and the Crimean. As a rule, differences in customs, dialect or dialect, ethnic origin. I am familiar with the Uighur, who comes from the Kashgarians (Ugr. Қәshқәrliқlәr). Her ancestors fled from Kashgar to KAZSSR in the 50s. XX century.

I will not go to extremes, as did the First President r. Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov in his "Rukhnama", stating that the Turkmens were born 5000 years ago. Let's start with what is known for certain.

1) Uighurs are the most ancient Turkic people.

Since ancient times, Central Asia has been not only the ancestral home of the Uighurs, but also one of the oldest and most valuable cradles of world culture. That is why the historian Lewis Morgan (1818-1881) noted: “The key of world culture is hidden in the Tarim Valley. When it is found, the secrets of world culture will become known. ”According to archaeological excavations, the Tochars once lived in the Tarim basin. In the Middle Ages, most of the Silk Roads passed through the Tarim Basin. The eastern Uyghurs who migrated from Mongolia to Xinjiang in 840 AD were thus the descendants of those who migrated from the Tarim Valley to Mongolia and the vicinity of Lake Baikal eight thousand years ago.

The ancestors of the Uyghurs were committed to shamanism. Shamanists believed in natural forces: Sun, Moon, Sky (blue sky), Earth, Water. According to these beliefs, the ancestors built dwellings in such a way that the doors would open at sunrise. The Türkic and East Uyghur kagans (Uigur-Orkhon kagans) sometimes (in especially solemn rites, feasts) sat facing the sunrise (east) and bowed to the Sun nine times. Even the names of the Uigur-Orkhon Khagans remind of these customs. For example, the Uigur-Orkhon Kagan Chondikhan (was in power from 821 to 824) bore the title: "Kun tanrida uluk bolmish Aliya Kuchluk bilge kagan" (Blessed by the sun mighty kagan).

The basis of the Uygur Kaganate was made up of the clan “ he is uyghur" and " tokkuz Uyghurs". Since that time, the tribes of the Tours merged into a single whole and began to be called " Uyghurs"(VII century, most likely).

Reading Mrs. Remileva "Oirat-Mongols" (2010). at the beginning of the book, you can see the line: "Zyungaria was partially inhabited by" Uighurs "- a people of Turkic origin, akin to the Mongols, who adopted the culture and writing, not from the Chinese, but from the west. ( Khara-Davan E. Genghis Khan as a commander and his legacy, Belgrade, 1929... P.S this book was read by L.N. Gumilyov at the beginning of his career).

The ancestors of the Uighurs before our era lived in a territory bounded in the east by Kumul, in the west by Manas, in the southwest by Turpan. If in ancient times it was not the Uighurs who lived in Dzungaria and the Tarim Valley, but some other peoples speaking a different language, then there would not be any in the names of lakes and mountains. rivers, localities, and so on, Uyghur (Turkic) meanings, such as "Barskel" (Tiger Lake), "Tanritag", "Altai" (Gold), "Kum" (Sand), "On su" (he is Kazakh ten, su - water), "Suli" (land saturated with water).

In 821 AD, the ruling court of the Tang dynasty presented as a concubine the Tang princess Tai H \ Uigur kagan Kun Tanrida bolmish Alp Kuchluk Yilis. Based on these circumstances, it can be concluded that Dzungaria and the Tarim Valley have been part of the Uyghur Kaganate since that time. Therefore, the Uyghur kagans kept numerous cavalry there. During the strengthening of the Uyghur Kaganate, when it accepted the framework of the empire (745-830), it included modern Mongolia and part of Inner Mongolia, Dzungaria, Tarim Valley, Fergana Valley, Kyrgyzstan, Ili Valley, and the vicinity of Balkhash.

Taking advantage of the difficult situation of the Uygur Kaganate (civil strife, natural disasters), the rebellious Kyrgyz (who were subordinate to the Uyghur Kaganate) captured Karabalgasun. They killed Kara Boluk and Kagan Kichik Tekin. The kagan's headquarters in Karabalgasun was set on fire. The state treasury was plundered. Thus, in the period of its heyday, the military units of 221 thousand horsemen, the Uyghur Kaganate in 839 could not hold back the heavy onslaught of the Kyrgyz, which ended so tragically. Subsequently, in 840 most of the eastern Uyghurs moved from the eastern lands of the Uyghur Kaganate (modern Mongolia) to the western lands of the Kaganate (Central Asia). A part of the Uighurs, who fled to the west, under the leadership of Pan Tekin, settled first near Barkol, and then in Turfan, Karashakhar, Kuchar. Their number did not exceed 200 thousand people, during this period the total number of Central Asian, in particular, Xinjiang Uyghurs exceeded one million people.

* map of the Mongol Empire.

By this time, the Uighurs had already lost the reins of greatness. It was the Uighurs who translated the Mongolian texts into the Turkic language. History knows Tatatung, a close associate of Genghis Khan, from the medieval Uighurs of Idicut. According to sources, he taught the medieval Mongols to write.

* modern drawing

Map of the Chagatai ulus (Moghulistan) of the 15th century. : the real dawn of the Karluks.

There are three pragmatic Uyghur communities on VKontakte:

1. BIZ UYGHURLAR WE ARE UYGURS بىز ئۇيغۇرلار
   Asking his Uighur friend from Shymkent: "Why did Kazakh Uyghurs live mainly near Almaty?" - Vatan is near. And she added that if she returns to Xinjiang, she will be able to return to Kazakhstan.

What is needed to detain a million members of one ethnic group in six months? Huge resources and complex organization, but the Chinese authorities are not stingy. The vast majority of the Uyghur population in China's western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, as well as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic minorities, are being held in custody to go through what the state calls "education transformation." Many tens of thousands of them were imprisoned in new camps that controlled their thoughts, with barbed wire, reinforced doors and security rooms.

The Chinese authorities are generally reserved and evasive, or even outright denying the facts themselves, when they come across reports of such camps. But now - explains in his article on The New York Times Xinjiang historian Ryan Toom- they will have to explain their own eloquent trail in evidence: an online public bidding system created by the government and inviting contractors to help build and run the camps.

Tum recalls how over the past decade, Xinjiang's authorities have accelerated policies aimed at changing the habits of the Uyghurs - even, according to the state, their thoughts. Local governments organize public ceremonies and sign requests from ethnic minorities to reaffirm their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party; they conduct compulsory refresher courses and dance performances because many Islamic scholars prohibit dancing. In some areas, security agencies regularly assess the risk posed by residents: Uyghurs receive a 10 percent deduction on their account only for their ethnicity, and receive an additional 10 percent if they pray daily.

Uyghurs are accustomed to living in an oppressed state, but the measures have become draconian with the arrival of a new regional party chief from Tibet (that is, another region with an oppressed minority) in late 2016. Since then, some local police officers say they are struggling to meet their new detention quotas - in the case of one village, that's 40 percent of the population.

In a new study Adriana Zanza, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, analyzed government announcements offering tenders for various contracts related to reeducation facilities in more than 40 localities in Xinjiang, revealing the vast bureaucratic, human and financial resources that the government has devoted to this detention network. The report reveals the state's commitment to setting up camps in all corners of the region since 2016, with a value of over 680 million yuan (over $ 107 million).

The invitation to tender appears to have been issued on April 27 - a sign that more camps will be built. These calls for tenders refer to compounds up to 81,754 square meters, and some to neighborhoods for the People's Police, paramilitary security forces. Local governments also advertise recruiting camp personnel with experience in criminal psychology or military and police service.

The evidence for these technical details is invaluable, especially given the growing difficulties faced by researchers and journalists trying to work in Xinjiang. Several foreign journalists produced important articles despite police harassment and short arrests; ethnic Uyghur reporters and their families are doing much worse.

Given the risks, first-hand information from former detainees remains rare - although something is starting to emerge.

In February, a Uyghur student studying in the United States gave the publication Foreign Policy one of the most detailed containment statements published to date. He was arrested on his return to China last year and then detained for 17 days without any charge. He described the long days of marching in a crowded cell, chanting slogans and watching propaganda videos about allegedly illegal religious activity. When he was released, the guard warned him, "Whatever you say or do in North America, your family is still here, and so are we."

Last month, an ethnic Kazakh described for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty his four month camp in northern Xinjiang. He met prisoners serving sentences of up to seven years. He said he was forced to learn how to "keep national secrets secret" and "not be a Muslim." In these cases, as in many others, the detainees were kept incommunicado, so that even their families did not know what was happening to them.

And now this rare eyewitness account is backed up, albeit unwittingly, by the Chinese state itself, as it publicly calls for tenders to build more prison camps.

Many details of this prison system are hidden and remain unknown - in fact, even the ultimate goal of the camps is not entirely clear.

They serve as a means for forced indoctrination - a citizen of Kazakhstan who visited his parents in Xinjiang and ended up in such a camp says that they were forbidden to thank Allah before eating, but were forced to praise the Communist Party, the PRC and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. They also sang songs praising the Party, learned Chinese and the history of Xinjiang's Central Asian ethnicities as backward before being "liberated" by the Chinese Communists in the 1950s.

Some officials use the camps to prevent as well as to block people they suspect of opposing Chinese rule: in at least two places, the authorities are sending people under the age of 40, claiming that this age group is a "violent generation."

Camps are also a weapon of punishment and, of course, threats. Few of the detainees are officially charged with anything, and even fewer are those who have been formally convicted. Some are told how long they will be held; others simply hold on indefinitely. This uncertainty - the arbitrary logic of detention - instills fear in the entire population.

Ryan Tum notes that widespread surveillance was noticeably intensified during his last trip to Xinjiang last December - so much so that he avoided talking to Uyghurs, fearing that mere contact with a foreigner would lead them to be sent to a camp. Meanwhile, Uyghur contacts outside of China compare the current campaign to the Mao-era "cultural revolution" and its ever-changing rules. They explain that even if the Uyghurs in Xinjiang today want to fully submit to the security regime, they simply do not know how to do it. In the past, joining the security forces (police, army, etc.) was a rare way to ensure personal safety. But even this does not help now.

Tens of thousands of families were torn apart; the whole culture is criminalized. Some local officials use threatening language to describe the purpose of the detention, such as "eradicating tumors" or spraying chemicals on crops to kill "weeds."

It is very difficult to denote in one word the deliberate and large-scale abuse of an ethnic group: old terms often mask the specifics of new injustices. And even comparisons between the suffering of different groups are inherently fraught with possible reductionism. Ryan Thum, he says, is willing to "dare" to make such a statement to describe the plight of the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz today: Xinjiang has become a police state that rivals North Korea, with formalized racism following the model of South African apartheid. We will add that even the "police state" does not sufficiently express what is happening, since we can call other countries, like the Russian Federation, a police state, with a much smaller (for now!) Control system than in the communist PRC.

There is every reason to fear that the situation will only get worse. Recently, there have been several reports of Uyghurs who have died in custody, an alarming echo of the use of torture in re-education camps in China for Falun Gong adherents. Judging by the massive construction of camps in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities do not seem to think they are anywhere near their goal.

How the Communist Party Drives Muslims to Suicide.

The persecution of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has reached the point that a resident of the city of Kashgar, driven to despair by threats of being placed in a political re-education camp, committed suicide.

Uyghur resident Tursun Ablet was unable to recite the text of the national anthem in Chinese to party officials, having memorized the words only in his native Uyghur. After that, he was threatened to be sent to a political re-education camp, where Tursun would be forced to adhere to the values ​​of communism and delete the values ​​of Islam from life, Radio Free Asia reports.

Unable to withstand pressure from government services, the man hanged himself in his native village.

“I heard that it was related to the classes he attended, something hurt him. The classes were organized by the Committee for Family Affairs for people who need to learn Chinese, the charter of the Communist Party, etc., ”explained a local government official.

The wife of the deceased said that the day before the suicide, Ablet returned from these same classes and said bitterly, "what kind of life is this?"

“All his life he worked as a laborer, he was a very quiet person, he took care of his family,” local residents who were familiar with the situation said about the deceased.