22 June 2007

Pakistan: no to forcible return of Uighurs to China
Ahead of a bilateral meeting between China and Pakistan, Amnesty
International is urging the Pakistan government not to forcibly return 22
unnamed Uighurs to China for fear that they could be at risk of serious
human rights violations.

According to reports, the Chinese authorities have demanded that
Pakistan locate and hand over 22 Uighurs who are said to be hiding in an
unknown tribal area in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao is due to
discuss the issue with Chinese officials at a meeting of the Pakistan-China
Joint Working Group on Terrorism in Beijing on 25 June 2007.

The 22 Uighurs under threat of arrest and deportation from Pakistan are
alleged to be members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which is
claimed by the Chinese authorities to be an armed secessionist group
with bases in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest
China, as well as in Pakistan. The group was listed as a ‘terrorist
organization’ by both the US and the UN in 2002 after repeated
lobbying from China. The evidence that formed the basis for this decision
remains unclear.

Amnesty International is concerned that Uighurs suspected of
involvement in what China terms as "separatist, terrorist or illegal religious
activities" are at risk of serious human rights violations if forcibly
returned to China, including unfair trial, torture and execution.

“China continues to make little distinction between Uighurs involved
in peaceful or violent nationalist activities, branding them as
‘separatists’ or ‘terrorists’. Whatever they are accused of, the risks
posed to these individuals if forcibly returned to China are extremely
grave,” said Tim Parritt, Deputy Director of Amnesty
International’s Asia-Pacific Programme.

In a recent case, Husein Dzhelil, a Uighur who had been recognised as a
refugee and resettled to Canada, was tried in Xinjiang after being
forcibly returned to China from Uzbekistan in June 2006. He claimed to
have been

Spoken in:
China, Kazakhstan 

Region:
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

Total speakers:
About 10 million 

Ranking:
76

Language family:
Altaic
 Turkic
  Southeastern
   Eastern
    Uyghur 

Official language of:
Xinjiang

Regulated by:
Working Committee of Ethnic Language and Writing of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

ISO 639-1:
ug

ISO 639-2:
uig

ISO 639-3:
uig

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچە‎/Uyƣurqə/Уйғурчә, or ئۇيغۇر تىلى‎/Uyƣur tili/Уйғур тили)^[1] is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghurstan), formerly also “Sinkiang” and “Chinese Turkestan,” a Central Asian region administered by China. In English, the name of the ethnicity and its language is spelled variously as Uyghur, Uighur, Uygur and Uigur. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" (IPA: [ˈwi.ɡɚ]) but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" (IPA: [uj.ˈɡur]) is closer to native [ʔʊɪ'ʁʊː].

• 1 Classification
• 2 Geographic distribution
• 3 History
• 4 Official status
• 5 Dialects
• 6 Sounds
  • 6.1 Uyghur consonants
• 7 Grammar
• 8 Vocabulary
• 9 Writing system
• 10 Text sample
• 11 Notes
• 12 See also
• 13 External links

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[edit] Classification

The Uyghur language belongs to the southeastern branch of the Turkic language family, which is grouped by some linguists among the Altaic languages.

[edit] Geographic distribution

A bilingual sign using Uyghur, Chinese and Hanyu Pinyin in Yining.

Uyghur is spoken by 8.5 million (2004) in China, mostly in the far western Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Uyghur is also spoken by 300,000 in Kazakhstan, and there are Uyghur-speaking communities in Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, and Uzbekistan.

[edit] History

Like the Uzbek language, the Uyghur language is descended from Chagatay Turkic common to Central Asian regions under the Chagatay and Timurid dyansties between 13 and 19th centuries, in turn descended from the Göktürk language. The Chagatay Turkic language in turn owed its origin in the Turkic dialects of the Qarluks and the Karakhanid state, centered around Kashgar. Contrary to some official histories, the Idikut states of Hami and Turpan, which would be properly labeled "Uyghur" during the Karakhanid and Mongol Yuan periods, spoke a dialect closer to Yugur than to Qarluk-Karakhanid. However these oases came under Chagatay and Timurid rule later in the 14th century, and slowly adopted the common language of the Muslim state when their own Buddhist culture eventually died out. Whereas colloquial Chagatay Turkic in Uzbekistan came under heavy modification by absorbing a Tajik Language substrate and a Tatar or Kazakh superstrate, the local variants in what is today Xinjiang came into contact with substratal local languages in Khotan, Kumul (Hami), Turpan and Gulja (Ili), notably the Indo-European substrates of Khotan and Turpan, and the distinctive Turkic language in Hami and Turpan closer to Yugur than Chagatay Turkic. Kashgar, being an important political and religious center of the Xinjiang Chagatayid states, gave rise to a Kashgarlik variety of the language with great currency in inter-oasis trade. However, since the 19th century Jadid Movement in Xinjiang, the Ili variety, one developed rather recently by Uyghur migrants from all oases since as late as 17th century, became the basis for modern standard Uyghur. This owed much to the strategic location of Ili being an entrepot between Xinjiang and Soviet, Uzbek and Afghan Central Asia, to the relative modern outlook of the Ililik intelligentsia, and to the homogeneous nature of the Ililik dialect as combining features from dialects of all Uyghur oases.

[edit] Official status

The Uyghurs are one of the 56 official nationalities in China, and Uyghur is an official language of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

[edit] Dialects

The dialects of Uyghur identified by the Ethnologue are Central Uyghur, Hotan (Hetian), and Lop (Luobu). There are two main languages in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region: Uyghur and manderin Chinese. Manderin Chinese is not used widely in southern Xinjiang. About 80 newspapers and magazines are available in Uighur; five TV channels and ten publishers serve as the Uighur media. The same as in all China, all of the information and news provided has to be censored by the government.

[edit] Sounds

Syllable structure can be CV, CVC, or CVCC. However, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis. Uyghur is not a tonal language. Like other Turkic languages, Uyghur has vowel harmony.

Furthermore, it distinguishes short and long vowels that respond differently to certain phonological processes, but vowel length distinctions are not indicated in the official orthographies, nor is the difference between front /i/ and back /ɯ/ which plays a phonological role. Of particular note is the Uyghur-specific feature of "vowel reduction" (or "vowel raising") in which unrounded non-high vowels in initial open syllables followed by /ɯ/ or /i/ are changed to [e] and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to [ɪ]; e.g. |al-Iŋ| → /eliŋ/ (cf. Turkish alın) ‘take!’, |ata-lAr-Im-Iz| → /atilirimiz/ (cf. Turkish atalarımız) ‘our fathers’ — not *etilirimiz in Uyghur because the second syllable has an underlying /a/, not /ɯ/: ata ‘father’; cf. |at-Im-Iz| → /etimiz/ (cf. Turkish atımız) ‘our horse’).

Another phonological Uyghur feature, which is rare among Turkic languages, is that the language is “non-rhotic”, similar to many English dialects of Southern England and New England. Syllable-final /r/ is “dropped;” more correctly speaking, it is assimilated to the preceding vowel and lengthens it; e.g., Uyghurlar [ʔʊɪ'ʁʊːlaː] ‘Uyghurs’. Many speakers occasionally do sound syllable-final /r/, for instance when they enunciate very carefully, such as in recitation or song or when wanting to teach non-Uyghurs “good” Uyghur, and in so doing they often overcompensate by inserting an [r] after a long vowels where there is no phonemic /r/.

[edit] Uyghur consonants

Perhaps the earliest empire to bring Turkistan under its sway was that of the Persians, who by 500 had cleared the Lydia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Uyghur: شىنجاڭ ئۇيغۇر ئاپتونوم رايونى
Xinjang Uyghur Aptonom Rayoni
Chinese:新疆维吾尔自治区
Xīnjiāng Wéiwú’ěr Zìzhìqū

Abbreviations: 新  (Pinyin: Xīn)

Origin of name
新 xīn - new
疆 jiāng - territory
"new territory"

Administration type
Autonomous region

Capital
(and largest city)
Ürümqi

CPC Ctte Secretary
Wang Lequan

Chairman
Ismail Tiliwaldi

Area
1,660,000 km² (1st)

Population (2004)
 - Density
19,630,000 (24th)
11.8/km² (29th)

GDP (2004)
 - per capita
CNY 220.0 billion (25th)
CNY 11,200 (13th)

HDI (2005)
0.757 (medium) (14th)

Major nationalities
Uyghur - 45%
Han - 41%
Kazakh - 7%
Hui - 5%
Kirghiz - 0.9%
Mongol - 0.8%
Dongxiang - 0.3%
Tajik - 0.2%
Xibe - 0.2%

Official Languages
Uyghur, Mandarin Chinese

Prefecture-level
14 divisions

County-level
99 divisions

Township-level†
1005 divisions

ISO 3166-2
CN-65

Official website
http://www.xinjiang.gov.cn (Simplified Chinese)

Source for population and GDP data:

Source for nationalities data:

† As at December 31, 2004

Xinjiang (Uyghur: شىنجاڭ (Xinjang); Chinese: 新疆; Pinyin: Xīnjiāng; Wade-Giles: Hsin¹-chiang¹; Postal map spelling: Sinkiang) is an autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area which takes up about one sixth of the country’s territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet Autonomous Region to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and the Pakistan- and India-controlled parts of Kashmir to the west. It administers most of Aksai Chin, a region claimed by India as part of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Xinjiang" or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier", a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China. It is home to a number of Turkic ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Uyghurs. The region is often referred to as Chinese Turkestan or East Turkestan.

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Historic names
• 2 Subdivisions
• 3 Geography and geology
• 4 Economy
• 5 Demographics
  • 5.1 HIV/AIDS
• 6 Media
• 7 Sports
• 8 See also
• 9 Notes
• 10 External links

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[edit] History

Main article: History of Xinjiang

[edit] Historic names

Once part of Western Regions, later, East Turkestan.

[edit] Subdivisions

Main article: List of administrative divisions of Xinjiang

Xinjiang is divided into two prefecture-level cities, seven prefectures, and five autonomous prefectures. (Two of the seven prefectures are in turn part of Ili, an autonomous prefecture.) These are then divided into eleven districts, twenty county-level cities, sixty-two counties, and six autonomous counties. Four of the county-level cities do not belong to any prefecture, and are de facto administered by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

Prefecture-level cities

Ürümqi
ئۈرۈمچى شەھرى
Ürümqi Xəh̡ri
乌鲁木齐市
Wūlǔmùqí Shì
 

Karamay
قاراماي شەھرى
K̡aramay Xəh̡ri
克拉玛依市
Kèlāmǎyī Shì
 

Directly administered county-level cities

Shihezi
شىخەنزە شەھرى
Xihənzə Xəh̡ri
石河子市
Shíhézǐ Shì
Administered de facto by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

Tumxuk
تۇمشۇق شەھرى
Tumxuk̡ Xəh̡ri
图木舒克市
Túmùshūkè Shì

Aral
ئارال شەھرى
Aral Xəh̡ri
阿拉尔市
Ālā’ěr Shì

Wujiaqu
ئۇجاچۇ شەھرى
Wujiaqü Xəh̡ri
五家渠市
Wǔjiāqú Shì

Prefectures

Turpan Prefecture
تۇرپان ۋىلايىتى
Turpan Vilayiti
吐鲁番地区
Tǔlǔfān Dìqū
 

Kumul Prefecture
قۇمۇل ۋىلايىتى
K̡umul Vilayiti
哈密地区
Hāmì Dìqū
 

Hotan Prefecture
خوتەن ۋىلايىتى
Hotən Vilayiti
和田地区
Hétián Dìqū
 

Aksu Prefecture
ئاقسۇ ۋىلايىتى
Ak̡su Vilayiti
阿克苏地区
Ākèsū Dìqū
 

Kashgar Prefecture
قەشقەر ۋىلايىتى
K̡əxk̡ər Vilayiti
喀什地区
Kāshí Dìqū
 

Tacheng Prefecture
تارباغاتاي ۋىلايىتى
Tarbaƣatay Vilayiti
塔城地区
Tǎchéng Dìqū
subordinate to Ili Prefecture

Altay Prefecture
ئالتاي ۋىلايىتى
Altay Vilayiti
阿勒泰地区
Ālètài Dìqū

Autonomous prefectures

Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture
قىزىلسۇ قىرغىز ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى
K̡izilsu K̡irƣiz Aptonom Oblasti
克孜勒苏柯尔克孜自治州
Kèzīlèsū Kē’ěrkèzī Zìzhìzhōu
 

Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture
بايىنغولىن موڭغۇل ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى
Bayinƣolin Mongƣol Aptonom Oblasti
巴音郭楞蒙古自治州
Bāyīnguōlèng Měnggǔ Zìzhìzhōu
 

Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture
سانجى خۇيزۇ ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى
Sanji Huizu Aptonom Oblasti
昌吉回族自治州
Chāngjí Huízú Zìzhìzhōu
 

Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture
بۆرتالا موڭغۇل ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى
Bɵrtala Mongƣol Aptonom Oblasti
博尔塔拉蒙古自治州
Bó’ěrtǎlā Měnggǔ Zìzhìzhōu
 

Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture
ئىلى قازاق ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى
Ili K̡azak̡ Aptonom Oblasti
伊犁哈萨克自治州
Yīlí Hāsàkè Zìzhìzhōu
 

[edit] Geography and geology

Xinjiang is the largest political subdivision of China - it accounts for more than one sixth of China’s total territory and a quarter of its boundary length. It is divided into two basins by Mount Tianshan. Dzungarian Basin is in the north, and Tarim Basin is in the south. Xinjiang’s lowest point is the Turfan Depression, 155 metres below sea level (lowest point in the PRC as well). Its highest peak, K2, is 8611 metres above sea level, on the border with Kashmir.

Most of Xinjiang is young geologically, having been formed from the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate, forming the Tian Shan, Kunlun Shan, and Pamir mountain ranges. Consequently, Xinjiang is a major earthquake zone. Older geological formations occur principally in the far north where the Junggar Block is geologically part of Kazakhstan, and in the east which is part of the North China Craton.

Xinjiang has within its borders the point of land remotest from the sea (Lat. 46 degrees 16.8 minutes N, Long. 86 degrees 40.2 minutes E) in the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert, 1,645 miles (2648 km) from the nearest coastline (straight-line distance).

The Tian Shan mountain range marks the Xinjiang-Kyrgyzstan border at the Torugart Pass (3752 m). The Karakorum highway (KKH) links Islamabad, Pakistan with Kashgar over the Khunjerab Pass.

The Eurasian pole of inaccessibility, the point on land farthest from any ocean, is located approximately 320 km (200 mi) from the city of Urumqi, within the boundary of Xinjiang.

Rivers include:

• Tarim River

Major Cities:

• Urumqi
• Turpan
• Kashgar
• Karamay
• Yining
• Shihezi

[edit] Economy

A panoramic view of Urumqi’s city center taken from Red Mountain (Hong Shan).

Xinjiang is known for its fruits and produce, including grapes, melons, pears, cotton, wheat, silk, walnuts and sheep. Xinjiang also has large deposits of minerals and oil.

Xinjiang’s nominal GDP was approximately 187 billion RMB (about 23 billion USD) in 2003, and increased to 220 billion RMB (about 28 billion USD) in 2004, due to the China Western Development policy introduced by the State Council to boost economic development in Western China. Its per capita GDP for 2003 was 9,710 RMB (1172 USD).

Oil and gas extraction industry in Aksu and Karamay is booming, with the West-East Gas Pipeline connecting to Shanghai.

Xinjiang’s exports amounted to 3.047 billion USD, while import turned out to be 2.589 billion USD in 2004. Most of the overall import/export volume in Xinjiang was directed to and from Kazakhstan through Ala Pass [1]. China’s first border free trade zone (Horgos Free Trade Zone) was located at the Xinjiang-Kazakhstan border city of Horgos [2]. Horgos is the largest land port in China’s western region and it has easy access to the Central Asian market. Xinjiang will also open its second border trade market to Kazakhstan in March 2006, the Jeminay Border Trade Zone. [3]

[edit] Demographics

The languages of Xinjang.

Xinjiang is home to several Muslim Turkic