August 5, 1972
The President of Uganda, Idi Amin, ordered the expulsion of his country’s Asian minority, giving them 90 days to leave the country. At the time of the expulsion, there were approximately 80,000 individuals of South Asian descent in Uganda, brought by the British to “serve as a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration”. In addition, in the 1890s, 32,000 laborers from British India were brought to Southeast Africa under indentured labor contracts to work on the construction of the Uganda Railway; some stayed. The expulsion took place against a backdrop of Indophobia in Uganda, with Amin accusing a minority of the Asian population of disloyalty, non-integration and commercial malpractice, claims Indian leaders disputed. Amin defended the expulsion by arguing that he was giving Uganda back to the ethnic Ugandan.
