Word: amins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During the four years that he has ruled the East African nation of Uganda, General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada has earned a worldwide reputation as a loudmouthed buffoon. In fact, Big Daddy is a murderous and perhaps mentally unbalanced bully whose reign of terror, according to one study by the International Commission of Jurists, has led to the deaths of anywhere from 25,000 to 250,000 Ugandans (out of a population of 11 million). One of Amin's ugliest characteristics is his tendency to use human beings as political pawns, as in the case of a British...
Three months ago, Amin announced that Hills, 61, a resident of Uganda since 1964 and a lecturer at a teachers' training college until 1973, had been arrested for "spying" and for writing, in an unpublished manuscript, that Big Daddy ruled in the manner of a "village tyrant." A civil court threw out the case against Hills, who is suffering from terminal cancer. Nonetheless, a secret military tribunal quickly found him guilty of treason. Yet even before the kangaroo-court tribunal had reached its verdict, Amin was offering to trade Hills' life for some concessions from the British government...
...Worried not only about Hills but about the fate of 700 other British citizens residing in Uganda, Britain's Labor Government dispatched to Kampala two royal envoys who seemed well-suited to the assignment: Lieut. General Sir Chandos Blair, 56, and retired Major Iain Grahame, 43, who were Amin's military commanders when he was a soldier in the now. disbanded King's African Rifles. When the envoys reached Kampala, they were greeted by a guard of honor and a military band. Amin was off at a rally in honor of African Refugee Day. This...
After a day of waiting in Kampala, the two officers were transported by helicopter to meet Amin in Arua, his birthplace in northern Uganda. With typical cunning, Big Daddy was waiting for them in the gloom of a thatched hut whose entrance was so low that the British officers were obliged to crawl inside, thereby enabling Radio Uganda to boast that "the two guests entered the general's house on their knees...
Today, says Ambassador Amin Hilmy II, the Arab League's representative at the U.N., "the picture that was painted of us-as mentally retarded cowards who couldn't handle modern machinery and would not stand and fight-has been disproved. Now Americans know that's wrong. Instead of our having to plead with them to listen, they ask us to tell them more...