Idi Amin-the Hitler of Uganda

  Idi Amin - The Hitler of Uganda (Part-1)

Idi Amin

   The diabolic deeds created by Idi Amin are legion. But what give a particularly inhuman edge to these acts are the elements of sexual willfulness that was a part of it. Suffering from a venereal disease himself, Idi Amin reveled in perpetrating sexual torture on his opponents. He was a cannibal and openly announced his preference for salted human flesh. His former Health Minister vouchsafed that he would often visit hospital morgues to taste the human body and flesh. Could Satan be more evil than Idi Amin?

   Idi Amin was born in 1928 at Koboko, the smallest country in Uganda’s West Nile district. He was better known as “the Hitler of Uganda”. Idi Amin’s father was a marginal farmer, his parents separated at his birth and he had a distraught childhood. His mother was what use to be described as a camp follower. After some time, she started living with a man about her age. In 1954, she moved into Jinja barracks to live with Corporal Yasin, a clerk in King’s African Rifles. Corporal Yasin was in his early twenties and about half her age. She practiced witchcraft and Yasin got tired of her and turned her out. A few days later, Yasin reported sick and before he could be medically examined, he died.

   Idi Amin first served as a laborer at the sugar plantations owned by the Mehtas, the millionaire industrialist from Gujarat in India, who were the first Asian to be expropriated and thrown out of Uganda when Idi Amin assumed power.

   Idi Amin joined the King’s African Rifles in 1946 as an assistant cook. He was six feet four inches in height and one quintal (One hundred kg) in weight.  He became Ugandan heavyweight boxing champion and held the title for nine years. His officers found him obedient, though a bit short in grey matter.

   After he became a sergeant, he was caught in bed with a colleague’s wife and pursued naked down the street. His military records showed that he had venereal disease. As a Corporal fighting the nationalist Mau Mau in Kenya in the 1950s, he established a sadistic record.

Dr. Milton Obote

   Only six months before Uganda’s freedom from the British rule early in 1962, Idi Amin was deputed to disarm the Turkana tribals in north-west Kenya. Instead of disarming them, he completely destroyed the Turkana village and buried the tribals in mass graves after murdering them. The Commander-in-Chief recommended Idi Amin’s court martial but ironically enough Prime Minister Dr. Milton Obote (1962-66), who was later overthrown by him on January 1971. Dr. Milton Obote was saved him, ignored the warning of the British Governor, Sir Walter, who told him in clear terms. “I warn you, this officer could cause you trouble in the future,” of which Dr. Milton Obote wrote later, “I remember that warning word for word, except for the word could......I have some doubt whether Sir Walter said could or would.”

   Dr. Milton Obote ignored not only the warning of Sir Walter but, also a motion passed by Parliament to suspend Idi Amin and order for inquiry into the charges that he had embezzled the proceeds from gold and ivory from Congo nationalists to the tune of 17,000 pounds which amount he had deposited in his account with his bank in 1966. Dr. Milton Obote, who had suspended the 1962 constitution and had become President on April 15, promoted Idi Amin to the rank of the Chief of Army staff within 19 days of the Parliament motion.

Capture the Power: 

   President Dr. Milton Obote (1966-71 and 1980-85) had gone to Singapore to attend the Commonwealth Conference when on January 25, 1971, Radio Uganda played martial music throughout the morning. Then at 3:45 pm (East African time) there was an announcement that the Army had taken over the reins of the government in its hands and the civilian government of Dr. Milton Obote had been superseded. In this broadcast, it was announced that Idi Amin had been asked by the armed forces to take over the administration of the country.
 

   This led to the establishment of one of the most diabolical, unscrupulous and insane despotisms in the annals of world history under a man who was not only uneducated, uncivilized and mentally a crack but also a cannibal and a brute savage capable of playing rough jokes at the cost of others lives and honour and an idiot whose idiosyncrasies did not end even with the end of his power.
 

A Savage:

   In September 1972, Idi Amin sent a cable to the United Nations Secretary General, Dr. Kurt Waldheim. “Hitler was right about the Jews, because the Israelis are not working in the interests of the people of the world, and that is why they burned the Israelis alive with gas on the soil of Germany.”

   This statement shows clearly his preference in the matter of means and methods of dealing with his opponents or the people his disliked because of a craze or tribal rivalry and intolerance. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt angrily denounced that statement as “an expression of mental derangement”. Idi Amin’s mental derangement was manifest in his large-scale massacre of his own countrymen. He hardly ever used discretion while referring to senior and widely respected statesmen of other nations. For an example, in August 1972 he told President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania in a telegram: “I want to assure you that I love you very much and if you had been a woman, I would have considered marrying you, although your head id full of grey hair, but as you are a man that possibility does not arise.” Similarly, when President Richard Nixon was in the midst of the Watergate crisis, Idi Amin sent an outrageous telegram to him: “Get well soon from Watergate.”

Idi Amin

   Idi Amin was a brute capable of adding insult to injury. While he was ejecting 40,000 Asian citizens from Uganda and seizing their assets, he cut one of the most savage jokes at them in a speech in August 1973: “Some Asians in Uganda have been painting themselves black with shoe-polish. Asians are our brothers and sisters. If anyone is found painting himself with black polish, disciplinary action will be taken against him.”

   Idi Amin had the capacity of using most offensive and uncivil language for his own countrymen. While addressing Ugandan students in Kampala, he said: “I am told that venereal disease is very high with you. You had better go to hospital and make yourselves very clean, or you will infect the whole population.”
 

   And this advice was given by a man who had himself been suffering from syphilis which had made him into the manic-depressive that he was. At a meeting of the Organization of African unity, Idi Amin startled the attending heads of African states by demonstrating how to suffocate people with a simple handkerchief.

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