A People Uprooted

<v Speaker>On August 4, 1972. <v Speaker>And in Africa, announced a shocking decision, a decision which affected the lives <v Speaker>of tens of thousands of human beings. <v Speaker>That man was General Idi Amin, president of the African nation of Uganda. <v Speaker>His decision was to expel all of the Asian people who lived in Uganda <v Speaker>and who held British passports. <v Speaker>They would be forced to sell their possessions, leave their homes behind and go. <v Speaker>[music] <v Speaker>The University of Wisconsin Green Bay presents, <v Speaker>Are people uprooted? <v Speaker>Your host is Tom McCoy. <v Speaker>People suddenly uprooted without a home. <v Speaker>Where would they go? <v Speaker>Finding an answer to this question was a big problem for the Asians. <v Speaker>But President Amin didn't stop there.

<v Speaker>On August 9th, he added all nationals from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh <v Speaker>to his expulsion list. <v Speaker>Within a few more days, he had even added Asians with Ugandan citizenship to the list. <v Speaker>However, Amin did make temporary exceptions for Asian physicians, <v Speaker>dentists, lawyers and other professionals who would be needed to help the Ugandan society <v Speaker>function. And after negative reactions from other African leaders. <v Speaker>President Amin did exempt Asians with Ugandan citizenship from his expulsion orders. <v Speaker>But most of these Asians felt threatened enough, however, that they decided to leave <v Speaker>their Ugandan homes anyway. <v Speaker>As the Asians began making preparations to leave, Kampala, the capital city of <v Speaker>Uganda, became a center of activity. <v Speaker>The city health center worked overtime in response to the demand for vaccinations. <v Speaker>The Asians involved in the expulsion decree between fifty thousand eighty thousand <v Speaker>people would have to be out of the country by November 8th, 1972. <v Speaker>Asian store owners held sales to clear their stock

<v Speaker>in preparation for selling their businesses. <v Speaker>President Amin had said that those Asians not complying with his 90 day expulsion <v Speaker>deadline would be, and we quote, sitting on a fire. <v Speaker>As crowds of people sought passports from the British passport office, British and <v Speaker>Asian officials responded to this shocking news by meeting with President Amin <v Speaker>in Kampala. At first, it looked as if some sort of compromise could be reached. <v Speaker>But then President Amin repeated his tough stand. <v Speaker>Asians have kept themselves apart <v Speaker>as it closed community and have <v Speaker>refused to integrate with <v Speaker>the Ugandan Africans. <v Speaker>Their main interest has been to exploit <v Speaker>the economy of Uganda and Ugandan <v Speaker>Africans. They have been

<v Speaker>milking the economy of the country. <v Speaker>Afterwards, he was asked what could happen if Britain refused to take the Asians. <v Speaker>Before I handed -- I handover, the government to another <v Speaker>government, I must reorganize this <v Speaker>country properly. <v Speaker>And this is the part of my program to follow. <v Speaker>I am the best friend of British and <v Speaker>uh - and the best friend is the friend who tells you your mistake. <v Speaker>And that is why I said that the responsibility of <v Speaker>actions in Uganda, it is the responsibility of <v Speaker>Great Britain. <v Speaker>President Amin had removed any doubt that the Ugandan Asians might have had. <v Speaker>Immediately they began selling their businesses, homes and other personal property at <v Speaker>great losses as they prepared to abandon their once comfortable but now threatened

<v Speaker>life in Uganda. <v Speaker>Most of the Asian people did not really want to leave, but feared for their family's <v Speaker>welfare if they stayed. Mr Abdul Kayyam Meer, formerly of Kampala, was <v Speaker>one of these threatend Asians. He tells why he and his wife took their two children from <v Speaker>Uganda, even though President Amin had exempted them as professional people. <v Speaker>The reason was just - because I have told you some that we were exempted people <v Speaker>myself, my wife being professional people, teaching. <v Speaker>But the only reason was that because my son was arrested by the army people for not <v Speaker>having an identification. But the the identification lie with the mother at home <v Speaker>and that is a passport or exempted card. <v Speaker>So I had to leave Uganda in that case, to be on the safe side. <v Speaker>Many Indian, Pakistani and Bangladesh nationals <v Speaker>made plans to return to their native countries. <v Speaker>The Asians with Ugandan citizenship, who had now become stateless, didn't know what to do <v Speaker>or where to go.

<v Speaker>A few thousand of these people would eventually be accepted in countries such as Canada <v Speaker>and the United States. Others would wonder about homeless. <v Speaker>But about 27,000 of these expelled Asians knew they would go to Great Britain. <v Speaker>Their British passports said they had a right to go there. <v Speaker>And besides, they had nowhere else they could go. <v Speaker>The Ugandan Asians were not the only ones who were making plans <v Speaker>to travel to Great Britain. A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Green <v Speaker>Bay also booked a flight to England in late 1972. <v Speaker>They did not plan to emigrate, of course. <v Speaker>Rather, they intended to study at close range the responses of human beings <v Speaker>and of governments to a social crisis situation such as the one imposed by President <v Speaker>Amin. <v Speaker>Their study focused on this question, what happens when people are suddenly <v Speaker>forced out of one world and thrust into a completely different world against <v Speaker>their wills? The University of Wisconsin Greenbay research team studying <v Speaker>this impelled migration phenomenon included Dr. E.

<v Speaker>Nelson Swinerton, a political scientist who investigated the various responses of <v Speaker>governments, both national and local, to this very pressing and complex <v Speaker>human problem situation. <v Speaker>Dr. G. Lynne Lackey, a sociologist who examined the social factors, race <v Speaker>relations, language barriers, employment and housing problems involved with the <v Speaker>rapid influx of a large immigrant population into an established society. <v Speaker>And Dr. William G. Keupper, a geographer who studied the patterns of settlements <v Speaker>in the movement of the Asian immigrants into British society, either through resettlement <v Speaker>centers or directly into community life. <v Speaker>We asked Dr. Keupper how these Asian people happened to be in Uganda in the first place. <v Speaker>Actually, Indian merchants have been trading along the East African coast for centuries, <v Speaker>beginning as early as perhaps two thousand years ago. <v Speaker>By the 1800s, about the time the British were beginning to arrive, the Indians had <v Speaker>achieved domination of the trade of the western Indian Ocean, arousing the suspicion and <v Speaker>the envy of the Arabs and later of the British.

<v Speaker>So the number of Asians have been traveling and trading through British East Africa for <v Speaker>several hundred years? <v Speaker>Yes, indeed, they had. <v Speaker>But the Asians began arriving in East Africa in substantial numbers <v Speaker>about the turn of the century. In fact, just before the turn of the century, beginning <v Speaker>with the recruitment of about 30,000 indentured laborers to aid <v Speaker>in the construction of a railway from Mombasa on the coast to Lake Victoria. <v Speaker>The building of this railway and the increasing European interest in the region <v Speaker>encouraged thousands of other Asians to migrate to East Africa to what has become the <v Speaker>countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. <v Speaker>This volitional, non-government supported migration was to continue for over 50 years. <v Speaker>Did the laborers settle in East Africa after their obligation to the railroad had been <v Speaker>completed? About 6,000 of the indentured laborers settle in East Africa, <v Speaker>mainly, of course, in Kenya, because that's where the railroad was constructed. <v Speaker>But it's important to remember that the bulk of the Asian population

<v Speaker>in East Africa that descended not from these indentured laborers, but rather <v Speaker>from the other - the other immigrants. They came from a number of different regions <v Speaker>in India, <v Speaker>and while most of them came from an essentially rural or agricultural background, <v Speaker>very few farmed in East Africa. <v Speaker>Why was that? <v Speaker>I suspect the major reason was the wide range of economic opportunity in the commercial <v Speaker>sphere that was available to them. <v Speaker>But the British colonial regime did place restraints against Asian - Asian land <v Speaker>ownership in some areas. <v Speaker>It sounds as if the East African government discriminated against the Asians. <v Speaker>In some ways they did right from the very beginning, but they also discriminated against <v Speaker>the African. What evolved, as a matter of fact, in East Africa was a three <v Speaker>tiered society. The Europeans were at the top. <v Speaker>These were the businessmen, the government officials, the white settlers. <v Speaker>The Africans were at the bottom and the Asians occupied

<v Speaker>the middle stratum where they provided an economic linkage between the top and the <v Speaker>bottom, but were sharply segregated socially <v Speaker>and politically from both the European and the Asia- and the African. <v Speaker>Would you see that the Asians were caught in the middle? <v Speaker>In some ways, they were caught. <v Speaker>On the other hand, within that middle sphere, there was a wide range of economic <v Speaker>opportunities available to them. <v Speaker>And so it didn't take the enterprising Asians very long to become dominant in such <v Speaker>activities as skill labor, commercial, wholesale <v Speaker>and retail trade and to some degree even in finance. <v Speaker>So then the Asians, who are not native Africans, actually <v Speaker>control the economies of these three African nations. <v Speaker>In many ways they did. This didn't particularly bother the Europeans, because, <v Speaker>of course, their interests were protected in this upper stratum. <v Speaker>But it certainly antagonized the African because they saw the Asians standing squarely

<v Speaker>in the way of their political, social and economic development. <v Speaker>Indeed, the Asians had not integrated into African society. <v Speaker>They had intentionally remained apart, keeping their own separate traditions and living <v Speaker>style. They ran businesses of all kinds in Uganda, ranging from small shops <v Speaker>to large conglomerates. <v Speaker>President Amin accused the Asians, and often rightly so, of sending the profits <v Speaker>from their Ugandan businesses to foreign bank accounts. <v Speaker>Because they didn't reinvest in the development of Ugandan business and especially <v Speaker>African enterprises Amin. <v Speaker>Accused the Asians of sabotaging the economy of his country. <v Speaker>With this excuse he ordered them to leave. <v Speaker>The Asians then had to sell their homes and businesses at great losses to African buyers <v Speaker>and were allowed to take only a small portion of their savings with them when they were <v Speaker>expelled. The rest of their money was impounded in Ugandan banks. <v Speaker>With 27,000 Asian immigrants arriving by November 8,

<v Speaker>Great Britain had to make some fast plans for accommodating them. <v Speaker>The British government and volunteer organizations confronted this massive influx of <v Speaker>Ugandan Asians with remarkable speed and efficiency. <v Speaker>Dr. Swinerton of the University of Wisconsin Greenbay faculty studied the response <v Speaker>of the British government to this crisis situation. <v Speaker>Well first of all, the British government never seriously considered not accepting these <v Speaker>British Asians. These people had British passports. <v Speaker>They were British citizens. And after they were expelled from their homeland, they had no <v Speaker>other place to go except to Great Britain. <v Speaker>So to handle the sudden influx of people, the British government organized the Uganda <v Speaker>Resettlement Board. <v Speaker>While I was in London, I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Thomas Critchley, who is <v Speaker>director of the Uganda Resettlement Board. <v Speaker>He told me how the board was organized. <v Speaker>Well, the chairman was a former head of the home office in this country. <v Speaker>A number of the other members were people with experience in government. <v Speaker>Others had experience in local government.

<v Speaker>Some came from the voluntary movement, which played a very big part in this emergency. <v Speaker>And we had one Asian representative on the board. <v Speaker>Basically, how did the board organize its work? <v Speaker>Well, our work was divided really into several stages. <v Speaker>First of all, we were concerned with their reception at the airports. <v Speaker>And we set up special teams comprised partly of volunteers and partly <v Speaker>of civil servants. And these were working round the clock 24 <v Speaker>hours for about six weeks, seven weeks while the air left was at its height. <v Speaker>They were meeting the people there at the airports. <v Speaker>That was the first phase. <v Speaker>Secondly, and this really overlapped the first phase, we were setting <v Speaker>up the resettlement centers. <v Speaker>We didn't at first know how many people would be going into the centers and how many <v Speaker>would be going straight to the community. <v Speaker>Um, the original proportion was about 30 percent going into our centers. <v Speaker>But towards the end of the airlift, when Amin's deadline approached,

<v Speaker>about 90 percent were coming in much more than we'd supposed. <v Speaker>And so we had to open, in all, 16 centers with accommodation for <v Speaker>about 15 or 16 thousand people. <v Speaker>That was the second phase. <v Speaker>And then the third phase was that the board took on the responsibility to try to <v Speaker>resettle these people from the camp. <v Speaker>Is that correct? Yes, indeed. <v Speaker>This has been our ambition all along. <v Speaker>We've seen these centers as being temporary, offering temporary accommodation. <v Speaker>And all the drive from the end of the air lift has been in getting these people into the <v Speaker>community settled in houses of jobs. <v Speaker>One of these resettlement centers was set up at Greenham Common, a functioning American <v Speaker>Air Force Base in Newbury, England. <v Speaker>During the last 15 days of September, various government and service organizations, <v Speaker>as well as volunteer workers from local parishes, readied the camp for the influx <v Speaker>of Ugandan Asians. <v Speaker>The chief administrator of Greenham Common was Brigadier Beyts.

<v Speaker>In an interview with Dr. W. Warner Prange of the University of Wisconsin Greenbay, <v Speaker>Mr Bates explained operations at the center. <v Speaker>We had the Department of Environment who were the main help, and <v Speaker>this was supplemented by voluntary services in the form of women's royal voluntary <v Speaker>services. Royal Red Cross and ?inaudible?, but above all, by <v Speaker>the voluntary workers in the local parishes around you had <v Speaker>been encouraged to come and work by the Salvation Army <v Speaker>who have been tremendously helpful here. <v Speaker>You are providing facilities for recreation and education. <v Speaker>You have your own school, have you not? <v Speaker>We had our own schools started the fourth day after we opened <v Speaker>here and this has provided schooling for <v Speaker>small children and also teenagers. <v Speaker>In all, we have had 400 small children here at school <v Speaker>and some 60 teenagers.

<v Speaker>Do you think the people in your center might get too accustomed to the security <v Speaker>of the camp and shy away from the realities of life. <v Speaker>Uh, in a very <v Speaker>few cases <v Speaker>this is true, yes, where particularl there <v Speaker>is no father and mother is alone with the children. <v Speaker>She, in fact, has nowhere else to go. And she is in a very helpless state. <v Speaker>The vast majority are very anxious to leave the center, <v Speaker>although they have had a quite happy time here, particularly over Christmas <v Speaker>when they were entertained very well by all the local people. <v Speaker>They do think that it's time they moved on. <v Speaker>And the longer they stay, the more rusty they become and more <v Speaker>lazy minded and so on. And they are very anxious to move on. <v Speaker>I found that the Ugandan Asians were most anxious to move on. <v Speaker>They were anxious to leave the resettlement centers and to begin life anew for themselves

<v Speaker>in Great Britain. Unfortunately, some of the Britishers weren't quite as anxious to <v Speaker>receive them into their communities. <v Speaker>In the beginning, there were even some public demonstrations opposing the immigration. <v Speaker>Most of these ill feelings, though, I think we can trace to fear of one sort or another. <v Speaker>Initial estimates of the numbers of Asians arriving in Britain were greatly exaggerated. <v Speaker>Also, I think there was probably a very real fear of competition for jobs, <v Speaker>for housing, which is very scarce in Great Britain and for other societal resources. <v Speaker>Racial bias was evident as well. <v Speaker>But as the time drew near for the Asians to enter the towns and boroughs, <v Speaker>the British by and large rallied in support of the Asians and welcomed <v Speaker>the immigrants. <v Speaker>Doctor Swinerton talked with Mr. Jaffer, a former Asian member of the Ugandan parliament, <v Speaker>about this very change of heart among the Britishers. <v Speaker>You were here when General Amin issued his decree.

<v Speaker>What was the reaction of the British people to this decree? <v Speaker>In the beginning, when this news came in, the government <v Speaker>and the people thought that there would be about a 100 or 1,000 people arriving <v Speaker>here. Then the figure went to 55,000 and everybody <v Speaker>was frightened. But when Amin said that he was going to put people <v Speaker>into concentration camp and when he gave so much publicity to the Hitler <v Speaker>and said that Hitler would - what Hitler did for Israel was the right thing. <v Speaker>Then the people got frightened that if that happens to the Asians or British Asians, <v Speaker>then people would be in real difficulties. <v Speaker>And the whole mood of British government and the British people completely <v Speaker>changed, and it came into favor of receiving Asians - <v Speaker>British Asians into this country. <v Speaker>I would like to give it illustration of the first flight <v Speaker>which arrived and I was at that airport.

<v Speaker>And at the airport, I was basically trying to see the reaction of the people who <v Speaker>came in. The first batch came in the bus from the <v Speaker>airport at air terminus and I was looking at their face. <v Speaker>It was so - There was so much worry. <v Speaker>They didn't know what's going to happen to them, whether the British would receive them <v Speaker>properly, whether they would be looked after, whether - what will happen? <v Speaker>Yhey had no idea. And when they were taken to the camps they - they they assured <v Speaker>them that they have the best accommodation. <v Speaker>They had all the facilities they can - cannot expect in their life. <v Speaker>And immediately on the same evening, about a 100 letters <v Speaker>from the villagers were written back to them that you can all come here because people <v Speaker>here receive you with both hands open. <v Speaker>And that encouraged people to come to England. <v Speaker>Otherwise, people would not have come. People would have preferred to buy a new one, <v Speaker>because they thought what welcome would the British would give them.

<v Speaker>And they didn't want to die. <v Speaker>After their arrival at the airports, some of the Asians moved on to the resettlement <v Speaker>centers for temporary housing and counseling while they were seeking jobs and homes in <v Speaker>the British community. These immigrants were not starving, tattered refugees. <v Speaker>They were middle class, business class people who were suddenly evicted from the country <v Speaker>they lived and worked in. <v Speaker>They did not want to be integrated either with the Africans or with the British. <v Speaker>They wanted to preserve their Asian heritage. <v Speaker>It was this preference for self-imposed segregation which had led to their <v Speaker>expulsion from Uganda. <v Speaker>And this attitude also influenced their reception by the British community. <v Speaker>One of the community relations officers in London, Mrs Parricide, discussed some <v Speaker>of the problems which the Ugandan Asians faced as they attempted to settle in the London <v Speaker>boroughs. <v Speaker>Oh, the problems are that when the immigrants <v Speaker>are living in the camps, they have relatives

<v Speaker>living in new home. <v Speaker>Those relatives get in touch with them at the camps and invite them <v Speaker>to come in and live with them, forgetting that they themselves <v Speaker>are living in cramped conditions and there wouldn't be enough space for the <v Speaker>relatives no matter how welcome they are. <v Speaker>They forget this at that time. <v Speaker>Now what happens is that they take them in. <v Speaker>Put up with them somehow or other for, say, a couple of weeks. <v Speaker>And the third week they're down to my office asking for accommodation, <v Speaker>whereas I don't have an accommodation available as such because <v Speaker>the landlords don't actually send us a list of any accommodation <v Speaker>available. They can't because what they want to do is to exploit <v Speaker>these people. By charging high rent? <v Speaker>Charge very high rents. <v Speaker>Now language is one of the real problems, isn't it? <v Speaker>Yes, it is a very real problem, because even

<v Speaker>though the heads of the families speak English, <v Speaker>the rest of the family does not speak English, especially the women. <v Speaker>And, um, it is the women who are faced with the problem. <v Speaker>Have the Ugandan agents been able to find employment in your burrough? <v Speaker>Yes, some of them have. <v Speaker>But the Ugandan Asians whom I know <v Speaker>a very large percentage of them do not speak English, <v Speaker>although they are skilled in certain trades. <v Speaker>They cannot obtain employment without <v Speaker>any knowledge of English. <v Speaker>Generally, how have the people reacted to these new arrivals? <v Speaker>Very well, actually, they have tried to help them as far <v Speaker>as possible. <v Speaker>I would say that especially of the host community <v Speaker>who have gone to great lengths to help the Ugandan Asians.

<v Speaker>Even yet, many of these Ugandan Asian immigrants are not really settled in Great Britain. <v Speaker>They have left the resettlement centers. But that doesn't mean they've found homes or <v Speaker>sometimes even jobs. <v Speaker>It doesn't mean their children have all been placed in schools. <v Speaker>And for some families, it doesn't even mean that they are completely united as a family <v Speaker>group. So the problem of the Ugandan Asians is not yet solved. <v Speaker>Dr. Kipper spoke with Lady Eirene White, a member of the House of Lords, about <v Speaker>Britain's continuing responsibility toward the Asians. <v Speaker>Well, I think the immediate reception of the Uganda nation was on the Hill <v Speaker>very well carried out. <v Speaker>It was done, as you know, on very short notice in many cases. <v Speaker>But the government rapidly established a number of centers all <v Speaker>over the country. And the voluntary organisations, the social <v Speaker>welfare organizations in this country, rallied round I think very <v Speaker>creditably. So, I believe that certainly the immediate reception was a very

<v Speaker>well carried out operation. <v Speaker>Those a very generous comments. Lady White. <v Speaker>But in the past, you have been critical of the government's response to the problem <v Speaker>of stateless Asians being separated from their families. <v Speaker>What do you think the government should do in this matter? <v Speaker>Well, I believe that this is a problem of sufficiently small proportions <v Speaker>for the government to be prepared to risk some, I think very slight <v Speaker>political backlash on this. <v Speaker>After all, you've given a figure of 300. <v Speaker>To be fair, I think it might be a little more - 400 <v Speaker>to 500 possiblt all told if we made a really full analysis <v Speaker>of this because it includes a certain number of <v Speaker>persons of the kind you you mentioned stateless heads of families who are, in fact, in <v Speaker>the United Kingdom, but under restriction because they came in illegally. <v Speaker>But it does appear to me that where the wife and the remainder

<v Speaker>of the family are here by right because they retain British citizenship <v Speaker>and are therefore entitled to claim support from <v Speaker>the state here as British citizens, that it really is foolish from all points <v Speaker>of view. Quite apart from the humane situation of splitting families <v Speaker>that the breadwinner should be allowed to come in and support his own family if that is <v Speaker>what he wishes. <v Speaker>The Asians' position in Kenya seems to be deteriorating. <v Speaker>How do you think Britain would respond to yet another immigration crisis generated <v Speaker>in East Africa? <v Speaker>I think the Kenya administration is a far more stable one, both at ministerial <v Speaker>and official level than anything you've ever experienced, frankly, in Uganda. <v Speaker>So I think the dangerous is a good deal less than some people suppose. <v Speaker>But I wouldn't pretend that it isn't there. <v Speaker>We've seen what happened in Uganda in the Autumn of 72, and we followed the response <v Speaker>by the British government and individual citizens to this emergency.

<v Speaker>We've heard about the situation in Kenya possibly becoming ripe for a similar enforced <v Speaker>migration crisis. <v Speaker>And we're reminded that Kenya represents only one of many examples where minority <v Speaker>populations could be subject to such unreasonable mandates. <v Speaker>We wonder what the British experience can tell us. <v Speaker>How could the United Nations have responded more effectively? <v Speaker>What more could the United States have done? <v Speaker>How can we prevent similar crises from occurring in the future? <v Speaker>We've sifted through the Ugandan Asian nightmare to understand it, to <v Speaker>learn from it. <v Speaker>We've watched children playing while governments continue to manipulate their lives. <v Speaker>We feel the weight of responsibility as governments and as human beings. <v Speaker>What must we do? So there's can be a world with more justice <v Speaker>than our own. [music]