In August, 1972, tens of thousands of Asian Ugandans were abruptly told that they had to leave the country.
They had 90 days to pack their things and find somewhere else to go, a forced displacement ordered by president Idi Amin the year after he came to power through a military coup.
Among those scrambling to leave the country were CTV News National Affairs Correspondent Omar Sachedina’s parents.
This month, ahead of the 50-year anniversary of this exodus, he visited Uganda with his mother on a quest to see where his family once lived.
“They spoke of Uganda often enough, and they always remembered it as a very idyllic country, where there’s a soft, gentle breeze in the summer time, where there are mango trees,” he said, speaking to CTV’s Your Morning on Monday from Jinja, Uganda.
“And they really spoke of it so lovingly, except for that moment in August 1972, where the Asians — so people from India, Pakistan, who, by the way, had been in this country for several generations — were forced to leave.”
Amin ordered the expulsion of all Ugandans of South Asian descent in 1972 amid a cloud of anti-Indian sentiment, accusing the Asian community in the country of disloyalty and sabotaging the economy by controlling the country’s wealth.
These tensions stemmed from the British Empire’s colonial rule of Uganda, during which the British frequently promoted Asian Ugandans to higher positions over Black Ugandans, making for an uneasy stratification of society. By the time Uganda achieved independence in 1962, the Asian community made up the backbone of the country’s economy, but this economic success made it a target for vilification. Idi Amin wanted to give greater power, wealth and opportunity to Black Ugandans.
At first, only those who did not achieve citizenship after Uganda became independent were included in the order to leave, but it quickly became clear that almost all Asian Ugandans were being forced out of their homes and out of the country. There were 80,000 affected in 1972.
“You can only imagine what that was like after settling and being in this country for generations, they were given just three months to pack up their belongings,” Sachedina said. “There are just horrific stories of people going through checkpoints from the capital, Kampala, to the airport […] in some cases having jewelry completely ripped out of their hands, not being able to take a lot of their belongings and [having to] start from scratch.”
The global community reacted with shock, but when it sunk in that the order was serious and would be enforced, many countries opened their doors to those who were expelled.
One of the early countries to act was Canada, which accepted at least 6,000 Ugandan Asian refugees between 1972 and 1974. It was the first large group of refugees Canada had accepted since broadening its refugee program beyond Europe in 1970, and the move was widely viewed as a success. Many of the arrivals to Canada spoke English and were matched with jobs that suited their skills, facilitating their transition
Sachedina’s father came to Canada during the initial wave of refugees, with his mother living in Britain briefly before Canada.
He described their journey to Canada as a “very bittersweet moment.”
“My parents had not even seen snow before they got to [Canada],” he added.
Despite Canada’s large role in helping Asian Ugandans who were forced out, for many Canadians it’s an untold story. Sachedina added that he never learned about it in school while growing up — he knew it happened purely because of stories his parents told him.
Being able to travel back to Uganda with his mother — his father passed away a few years ago — has been “so precious,” he said, noting that while it’s a very personal story that he has been working on for the past decade, “it’s a story that in some ways belongs to every single Canadian.
Sachedina’s journey to learn more about not only his family history, but about other Canadian immigrants expelled from Uganda, will be released in a W5 exclusive documentary this October.
