<~text text="Death of a Dictator: Idi Amin: 1925 - 2003">

Idi Amin Dada, who has died in Saudi Arabia, presided over a decade-long reign of terror in Uganda that encompassed mass murder and torture and left in ruins a country once described by Winston Churchill as the Pearl of Africa.

Throughout the 1970s Amin, a former trainee cook in the King’s African Rifles, was constantly in the spotlight, hurling outlandish insults at world leaders and flaunting his brutal powers.

If the truth be told, Fleet Street and Scotland’s press initially loved the flamboyant Ugandan tyrant. His buffoonery made good copy. As well as declaring himself Emperor of Uganda and awarding himself the VC (Victorious Cross) and CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire), he also styled himself “the last king of Scotland”. He wore a kilt and tartan forage cap, symbols of a love affair with Scotland that began when Willie Cochrane, pipe major of the King’s African Rifles, taught Amin to play the bagpipes.

When British-Uganda relations were at an all-time low, he proposed marriage to Princess Anne as a way of repairing relations. He asked the Queen to send him “her 25-year-old knickers” in celebration of her silver anniversary on the throne.

But it is for his butchery rather than his clowning that Amin must be remembered. While nobody knows how many Ugandans were killed at his behest during his 1971-79 dictatorship, international human rights groups estimate the toll at between 300,000 and 500,000 out of a population of 12 million. He expelled 50,000 Ugandan Asians to Britain and Canada.

The official killers came from the chillingly named Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau. They mainly comprised men from Amin’s own tribe, the Kakwa of northwestern Uganda near the Sudan border. Most died because Amin, who promoted himself to field marshal, and his acolytes despised their origins or because they wanted their women, cars, houses and money.

Amin’s victims were either shot or bludgeoned to death. Many condemned men were forced to smash the skulls of fellow prisoners with sledgehammers. They, in turn, were similarly dispatched by others lined up behind them. Nicholas Moore, Reuters chief correspondent in East Africa, was arrested by Amin and shared a blood-caked prison cell with men who were dragged away to be killed in this way nearby. Describing the sound of each execution, Moore said it was “a curious noise, as of an egg being broken”.

Amin’s sadism was not taken seriously until it affected the countries that had helped him to power, Britain and Israel.

Such were the compromises we countenanced with our own values during the Cold War. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2003 12:33 AM