Few tears for Amin
2003-08-16 15:45
Henry Wassa
Kampala - Reaction to the death on Saturday in Saudi Arabia of former dictator Idi Amin Dada was generally muted in the country he brutalized for eight years before his ouster and exile in 1979.
"Let him die because he killed so many people. He killed my uncle who was supporting our family," said Michael Mademaga, 41, an office messenger who said Amin's agents killed his uncle in 1974 and dumped him in the Nile River east of Kampala.
"His body should be brought back to Uganda and put on display for people to view somebody who killed so many people."
Although there are no official records of how many people were killed after Amin seized power in a 1971 coup, it is believed his victims numbered more than 100 000; some reports say as many as 300 000.
The Reverend Alfred Ocur, an Anglican priest in the central town of
Lira - an area targeted by Amin because it is the homeland of Milton Obote, the man he ousted and who eventually replaced him in
1979 - expressed regret that Amin had died unrepentant.
"He should have lived longer to repent. He's now gone, he's dead, and it's beyond our human control; but he's going to face eternal judgment," he said of the former non-commissioned officer in the British colonial army who was a convert to Islam.
'Not a bad man'
Shaban Mubajje, the mufti or leader of Ugandan's Muslim community, told the private Central Broadcasting Service that Amin had "made mistakes, but he was not a bad man."
He called on all Muslims to gather in mosques to pray for Amin's soul.
It was not clear when and where Amin would be buried; his wife Madina Amin called the radio at 13:30 1(0:30 GMT) to announce his death in a Saudi hospital from kidney failure and said burial arrangements were still under discussion.
A common saying in many languages in eastern Africa holds that even though a person has done bad things while alive, in death, he or she will be properly mourned and wept over.
Reed Brody, legal counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said on Saturday it was "a shame that death caught up with Idi Amin before justice did. Idi Amin was a brutal tyrant, but he has died the peaceful death that he denied to so many Ugandans."
Residents of Indian origin
Jiza Patel was four years old when Idi Amin expelled his grandfather and tens of thousands of other residents of Indian origin from Uganda in 1972 in a move to "Africanise" the economy of the East African nation.
The move was initially popular among Ugandans who resented the power and the influence of those they called "the Asians" who controlled most of the country's retail business and manufacturing. But the poorly organized nationalization destroyed the Ugandan economy.
"Amin did very bad things to my people and to the people of Uganda," said Patel, 35, who first came to Uganda in 1992. "We have better things to do now than to think about a man who destroyed this country."
Dalal Murtaza, the 44-year-old chair of Uganda's 15 000-member Indian Association, said the Asian community was happy in Uganda under the government of President Yoweri Museveni, who invited Asians back to reclaim their property and help rebuild the economy.
"We have no grudges against Amin because his era has ended. The expulsion of the Asians was a very sad event ... the country was ruined, and many lives were lost. Now it's history because he is dead, and there's no point having grudges against a dead man."
- AP