Idi Amin 'not a monster'

2005-08-11 17:48

Entebbe - Hollywood star Forest Whitaker who is playing Idi Amin in the screen version of the acclaimed novel The Last King of Scotland, says the late Ugandan dictator was no saint, but was not the monster that has been portrayed in the West.

In a weekend interview, Whitaker said his research for the role in the film had changed his perception of Amin, whose brutal rule over Uganda between 1971 and 1979 was punctuated by bizarre and often psychopathic behaviour, and the deaths of up to half a million people.

"I'm not trying to defend Amin, the Amin I found was not a good man, but not the monster as presented," he said during a break on the set as filming for the movie wrapped up at the airport town of Entebbe outside Kampala on Lake Victoria.

"When I first decided to act Amin, I had that perception of Amin as presented by the West," said the 44-year-old Whitaker, who has won praise for parts in Phone Booth, The Crying Game, Good Morning, Vietnam and Platoon.

A better understanding

"After I started (researching) his rule and his life, what was being portrayed in the West was not his real image," he said. "Now, I have come to appreciate and understand why he made certain decisions at certain times."

"He did things like other big men who did things that helped their countries," Whitaker said, noting in particular he appreciated Amin's virulent abhorrence of European colonialism in Africa.

Between 300 000 and 500 000 Ugandans were killed and the country's entire Asian population expelled during Amin's despotic rule, the height of which is covered by the Last King of Scotland.

The title of the novel refers to Amin's stated desire to take over from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as monarch to the Scots, and tells the story of Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, who becomes Amin's physician.

Flattered at first by his command appointment, the physician is horrified to discover his unknowing complicity in the savage crimes of Amin, who in real life died in exile in Saudi Arabia in August 2003 of multiple organ failure.

- AFP