Uyghurs

The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group from Central and East Asia. They are recognized by the Chinese government only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation. Since 2015, it has been estimated that over a million UyGHurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps.

About Uyghurs in brief

Summary UyghursThe Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group from Central and East Asia. They are recognized by the Chinese government only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation. Since 2015, it has been estimated that over a million UyGHurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps. The Chinese government maintains its actions as justifiable responses to a threat of extremism due to the East Turkestan independence movement. Critics of China’s treatment of UYghurs have accused the government of propagating a policy of sinicization in the 21st century, calling this policy an ethnocide or a cultural genocide of Uy Ghurs. The name Uighur is usually pronounced in English as ˈwiːɡʊər, although some scholars use the closer pronunciation uˉiˉe. The original meaning of the term is unclear. The Old Turkic inscriptions record a word uyghur, the word for land. It is transcribed into Tang annals as 皾 in Chinese. It was used as the name of one of the Turkic policities in the interim between the First and Second Dynasties. In Chinese, it is written 维吾尔 維吾爾, which is romanized in pinyin as Wéiwú’ěr. In English, the name is officially spelled Uyaghur by the Xinjiang government but also appears as Uighurs, Uigur and Uygur in Latin; they are all pronounced as.

In Arabic script, the ethnonym is written.  ; simplified Chinese: 箉  “Uighur”. In Latin, it’s written “Uygur,” which means “Turkic” or “Turkish” in Latin, and ‘Uigur’ in Arabic script. The Uygurs are considered to be one of China”s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. An estimated 80% of Xinjiang’ Uighurs still live in the Tarim Basin. Smaller communities live in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Australia, Russia and Sweden. They also live in other Turkic countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey. The largest community is in Taoyuan County, in North-Central Hunan. They live in Dzungaria, in the historical region of Dzunkaria. They have traditionally inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert within the Taram Basin. They started to become Islamized in the 10th century and most Uy ghurs identified as Muslims by the 16th century. They formed one of three ethnic groups that formed the First Göktürkates in the First First Dynastied period.