Ugandan Asians stay off streets after racial violence
13/04/2007
Some members of the Asian community in Uganda’s capital Kampala kept their children home from school, skipped work and left their shops shuttered today, a day after a protest ignited racial violence.
President Yoweri Museveni today condemned yesterday’s violence during which he said people of Indian and Chinese origin were attacked.
A demonstration in Kampala against a company’s plans to cut down part of a prized rain forest set off racial tension that has long existed between black Ugandans and those of Asian origin.
The company is a subsidiary of the Mehta Group, which is run by Ugandans of Indian descent, and it wants to slash trees in part of the Mabira Forest Reserve to expand a sugar plantation.
A mob stoned to death two people of Asian origin and two other people were also killed in the violence, during which military police in armoured vehicles fired tear gas into the crowd.
None of the victims was believed to be connected to the Mehta Group.
“How would we feel if our people who go to Dubai, Japan, the USA … were attacked and stoned to death?” Museveni said in a statement distributed to journalists.
“Whatever opinions we have about any subject, must be expressed peacefully. This is a must. Nobody has a right to use violence against any other Ugandan or visitors to Uganda or their properties.”
This morning, many Asian-owned shops were closed in the capital, and a police spokesman, Simeon Nsubuga, said they had received reports that many Ugandan Asians had not reported to work and were keeping their children home from in school.
The racial discord goes back several decades.
In the 1970s, dictator Idi Amin expelled South Asians, saying they were trying to dominate the economy.
An official of an Asian community association said Friday that they are going to petition Mahendra Mehta, a director of the Mehta Group, to stop the company’s planned expansion of its sugar plantation.
“Mabira has made all of us suffer from some Ugandans’ anger. The earlier he (Mehta) gives up about Mabira the better for all of us,” said Sign Pravel, co-ordinator of the Association of Asian Community in Uganda.
Nsubuga, the police official, spoke on three radio stations to try to reassure Ugandan Asians that officers had the situation under control.
“We call upon our brothers and sisters of the Asian community to go back to their places of work and start working,” Nsubuga said later.
“We have deployed police in all parts of the city and no one will attack them. We regret what happened yesterday but the situation is now under control.”
Nsubuga said police are hunting for the people responsible for the killings.
Police arrested 20 people yesterday suspected of being the ringleaders of the violence.
The crowd burned cars, attacked a Hindu temple and chanted, “We are tired of Asians!” and “They should go back to their land!” Police fired live bullets in the air and used tear gas.
A subsidiary of the Mehta Group, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda, wants to use 17,000 acres – nearly a third of the Mabira Forest Reserve – to expand the plantation.
The Ugandan government owns a 51 percent stake in the company, and recent indications that it will allow the forest to be axed have enraged residents here.
Phillip Karugaba, spokesman of the Environmental Action Network, a local lobby group campaigning against the Mehta Group’s plans, deplored today’s violence.
But “this forest is our heritage and cannot be given away by the Ugandan government,” Karugaba said.
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