Dead Cannibal
By Michael Radu
August 19, 2003


According to the news agencies, Idi Amin, a.k.a.  "Big Daddy" or, more 
formally "His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadj 
Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth 
and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in 
General and Uganda in Particular" has died on August 15. 

Amin's name was synonymous with tyranny during his presidency of 
Uganda, from 1971-79. Amin's career took him from illiterate national 
boxing champion to chief of staff, "doctor" to military dictator, mass 
murderer to chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In the 
nearly 25 years since his rule ended, has the behavior of African 
regimes or outside observers and aid donors changed?

"Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are," the 
saying goes. Amin's friends included the communist Red Brigades and 
Palestinian terrorists he aided in their 1976 hijacking of an Air 
France airliner to Entebbe. The Jewish passengers being held on the 
plane (who were rescued in the spectacular Israeli raid that ended the 
hijacking) had been carefully selected: Amin, who publicly praised 
Hitler for murdering Jews, had become an admirer of the Fuhrer after 
Israel, which he visited, refused to provide him with modern weapons. 

Idi Amin was a declared racist. He confiscated the wealth and expelled 
from Uganda all Asians, whose crime was being hard working, and Asian. 
(Neither India nor Pakistan would receive them: it was the United 
Kingdom that gave them asylum and another chance to use their talents 
and get rich again.)

But the West's blind eye toward Amin was such that, as the U.S. 
ambassador to Uganda at the time, Thomas Melady, recently noted, the 
human rights-oriented administration of future Nobel Peace laureate 
Jimmy Carter refused to impose even the most minimal sanctions (such as 
on Ugandan coffee) on Amin's regime. And this was an administration 
that unhesitatingly penalized Argentina for human rights abuses against 
educated, middle-class Marxist terrorists. 

That Amin was a member of Uganda's small Muslim community allowed him 
ultimately, after sometime in Libya, to reach safe and comfortable 
asylum in Saudi Arabia. He was granted asylum, thereby avoiding a trial 
in his own country for the 100,000 to 300,000 murders committed by his 
regime, in the name of umma (worldwide Muslim community) solidarity. 
Reporters describe the Saudi-funded exile's life in Jeddah as one of a 
comfortable suburban home, driving Cadillacs, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, 
lunching at the Meridien, having tea at the Sofitel, and swimming and 
taking massages at the Intercontinental.. 

The UN (which, interestingly, has been less vocal about Amin than it 
has been about Milosevic or Mladic), and the human rights NGOs were all 
disturbingly mute about Amin's comfortable asylum. Because Amin has 
enjoyed exile as a Muslim, the world must tolerate it, fearful as the 
West is of holding Muslims to the same human rights standard as others 
are held to.

Indeed, while 1979 was a bad year for African dictators-cannibalistic 
Jean Bedel Bokassa, the "Emperor" of Central Africa, was overthrown by 
his erstwhile French protectors; sadistic Macias Nguema of Equatorial 
Guinea was shot by a Moroccan squad (locals did not believe he could be 
killed, considering his voodoo talents)-Amin at least survived, no 
matter how many of his countrymen he fed to the crocodiles. Interesting 
for those who still believe, or claim to believe, in "international 
law," Bokassa, a recent convert to Islam, was removed by a perfectly 
illegal French Foreign Legion intervention; Moroccans tied up 
Equatorial Guinea after Nguema, and it was an illegal Tanzanian 
invasion that liberated Uganda from Amin. 

After becoming chairman of the OAU in 1975, Amin was able to use that 
platform to rant about Israeli "racism" and other causes. At the time 
Amin became chairman, chairmanship of the OAU--which has since been 
renamed the African Union (AU)--was a matter of rotation. The 
chairman's values were assumed to be "African" because he was president 
of a member state. The Libyan-backed AU does not seem troubled by its 
history of glorifying mass murderers such as Amin, Bokassa, or Nguema. 
Old habits are hard to break, and the AU continues to preclude 
discussion of this by labeling it "racism" to question Africa or an 
African leader.

"African solidarity," a racialist term if ever there was one, remains 
the AU's approach to the rest of the world. Amin may have been a 
criminal, but non-Africans have no right to say so. The same AU nations 
that judge other nations' pasts harshly (Europeans, for instance, 
were "slave-owning criminals") is mute about Amin (and Bokassa, Nguema. 
etc.). But that was in the past, some would say - wrongly. Today Amin's 
successors, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Taylor in Liberia, are still protected 
by their African colleagues. Mugabe is still in power (and harboring 
fellow murderer and former Ethiopian version of Stalin, Mengistu Haile 
Mariam) and still ruining what was once one of Africa's prosperous 
countries, simply because South Africa does not want him out. Nigeria, 
which vies with South Africa for African leadership, has long allowed 
Taylor to stay in power and create havoc throughout the region, and now 
has given him asylum - despite his indictment  by a UN court in Sierra 
Leone.

And then there is Central Africa, a bloody mess the size of Western 
Europe. In 1994 the majority Hutus in Rwanda murdered at least half a 
million Tutsis, in a mass frenzy of genocidal proportions. What 
did "Africa" and its Western supporters , or enablers, do? Blame the 
West for not stopping Africans from butchering Africans, and have the 
UN establish a court to try the perpetrators. That court, in Tanzania, 
has managed to convict 15 persons in seven years at the cost of sixty 
million dollars…Meanwhile in neighboring Burundi the Hutus are trying 
hard to come to power - with the potential of a Rwanda repeat.

As for the Democratic Republic of Congo (!!!) , the continent's second 
largest "country", it is a huge sore on the map, robbed blind 
by "friends" like Angola and Zimbabwe, with large areas under Ugandan 
or Rwandan control, a political fiction but a much too real tragedy. 
After Mugabe and the Angolans stole enough and left (just as the 
Nigerians did in Liberia a few years back), it was left to…the French 
to establish temporary order in a small region.

Collapse in Sierra Leone ? Call the British. Collapse in Côte d'Ivoire? 
Call the French. Collapse in Liberia? Call the Marines. Where is the 
African Union, so aggressive in condemning colonialism and slavery (but 
only the European part in it) and demanding universal respect and "a 
voice" in world affairs? Well, the AU did take a position on Zimbabwe - 
it elected Mugabe as one of its vice presidents. 

There are, of course, notable and decent exceptions - Senegal, Botswana 
and… Senegal and Botswana. Uganda itself has recovered from Amin's 
reign of destruction and is now doing better than most. But all in all 
it does not seem that "Africa", or at least its self - proclaimed 
spokesmen have internalized the lessons of  Idi Amin's rule. He may be 
dying but the evil he represented still haunts the continent.

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