Loading the player...
Transcript
Idi Amin, as soon as he was in power, within a few months he announced that Asians were corrupting the country, you know? And they were greedy and they weren’t helping out the local people. So he announced that all the Asians should leave the country within ninety days…
…Most of the people didn’t take any notice of the ninety days’ notice. You know, they thought that he was just bluffing like you know. The Government of India, the Government of Britain, tried to persuade him to reverse his decision. But he wouldn’t have it. So once people knew that … he was serious about it, everybody started getting ready. Some of the people there didn’t even have passports because they never thought that they would leave this country. There was so many red tapes you know, that we had to go to Kampala, filling various forms and there were big, big queues, you know.
I was stationed in Jinja. From Jinja to go to Entebbe, at that time there was tribal war going on as well. So they had several check points and there were quite a few military personnel on the way. So we had to go through about five to seven checkpoints and there they would search our baggage and everything and whatever they found – sort of good, they would just take it without asking us, just take it, you know, at gun point. We couldn’t say anything to them you know. We were more worried about our lives than belongings. Once we boarded the plane, there was a sense of relief, you know. That at least we are leaving this country, but at the same time we were sorry that we were leaving our family behind. We had a house servant. She was crying out, you know, she said, ‘It has nothing to do with us. We liked you Asians and everybody’, but she said ‘it’s beyond us’, you know. They were all crying, my family was emotional as well, you know. They didn’t know what’s going to happen, you know, to them or to me. But eventually we boarded the plane and there was sort of relief in a way that at least we are out- away from this country.”
Tasks
- What decision has General Amin announced concerning Asian holders of British passports?
- How many people are estimated to be affected by this decision?
- What does the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary suggest is the reason for this announcement?
- Why do you think this document is labelled ‘secret’?
- What do you think would be the impact of such a decision on the individuals concerned?
- Does the oral testimony reveal how people reacted to the news initially? What does the testimony show beyond Source 1a?