Expulsion of Asians from Uganda
This article is part of a series aboutIdi Amin Military career President of Uganda(1971–1979) Opposition and overthrow Media portrayals In early August 1972, the President of Uganda Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of his country's Indian minority, giving them 90 days to leave the country.
Many world leaders condemned the expulsion and several nations, particularly the United Kingdom and India, cut diplomatic ties as a result.
The economy suffered a significant drop in GDP as many native Ugandans lacked the expertise necessary to operate their newly acquired businesses.
[8] They were brought to the Uganda Protectorate by the British to "serve as a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration".
[9] Most of the surviving Indians returned home, but 6,724 individuals decided to remain in the African Great Lakes after the line's completion.
[10] At the time of the expulsion, there were approximately 80,000 individuals of South Asian descent in Uganda, of whom 23,000 had had their applications for citizenship both processed and accepted.
[8] By the early 1970s, many Indians in Southeast Africa and Uganda were employed in the sartorial and banking businesses[10] and Indophobia was already engrained by the start of Amin's rule in February 1971.
The 1968 Committee on the "Africanisation in Commerce and Industry", for example, had made far-reaching Indophobic proposals and a system of work permits and trade licences was introduced in 1969 to restrict the role of non-citizen Indians in economic and professional activities.
[6][5] In order to resolve the "misunderstandings" regarding the role of Uganda's Asian minority in society, he convened an Indian 'conference' for 7–8 December.
In a memorandum presented on the second day of the conference, he set out his hope that "the wide gap" between Ugandan Indians and Africans would narrow.
[6][14] On 4 August 1972, Amin declared that Britain would need to take on the responsibility for caring for British subjects who were of Indian origin,[6] accusing them of "sabotaging Uganda's economy and encouraging corruption".
Some of Amin's former supporters suggest that it followed a dream in which, he claimed, Allah had told him to expel them, as well as plot vengeance against the British government for refusing to provide him with arms to invade Tanzania.
Our deliberate policy is to transfer the economic control of Uganda into the hands of Ugandans, for the first time in our country's history.The expulsion and redistribution of property were officially termed "Operation Mafuta Mingi".
[5] Journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey described the expulsion as "the most explicitly racist policy ever adopted in black Africa.
Malawi, Pakistan, West Germany and the United States took 1,000 refugees each, with smaller numbers emigrating to Australia, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Mauritius and New Zealand.
The Aga Khan IV, the Imam of Nizari Ismailis, phoned his acquaintance Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
[5] The UN dispatched the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Robert K. A. Gardiner, who attempted in vain to convince Amin to reverse his decision.
The real value of salaries and wages plummeted by 90% in less than a decade following the expulsion, and although some of these businesses were handed over to native Ugandans, Uganda's industrial sector, which was seen as the backbone of the economy, was damaged due to the lack of skilled workers.
