On 4 August 1972, as part of what became known as the
economic war,
Idi Amin,
President of Uganda, gave
Uganda's Asians (mostly
Gujaratis of
Indian origin) 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed,
God told him to expel them.
The order for expulsion was based on the
Indophobic social climate of Uganda. The Ugandan government claimed that the Indians were hoarding wealth and goods to the detriment of indigenous Africans, "sabotaging" the Ugandan economy.
Historical background
In 1965, under
Prime Minister Milton Obote (later President),
Kenyans had been barred from leadership positions within the government, and this was followed by the removal of Kenyans en masse from Uganda in 1969.
Former British colonies in
Sub-Saharan Africa have many citizens of
South Asian descent. They were brought there by the
British Empire from
British India to do
clerical work in Imperial service, or unskilled/semi-skilled manual labour such as construction or farmwork. In academic discourse, racism directed against these people from their host countries falls under the
rubric of
Indophobia. The most prominent example of this is the
ethnic cleansing of the Indian (sometimes simply called "Asian") minority in Uganda by the dictator
Idi Amin.<ref...
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