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| | The !:Global Sindhis Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | Views: 767 | | Apr 14, 2007 9:21 am | | Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | # | 
Pushpa Moorjani | | Sindhis are very enterprising and they take great risk and plunge in to foreign lands and make a bright future for themselves and their families. But some times they are not so lucky. Specially, if they go to those places where there is lack of security.
Our Sindhi community friends are under great stress nowadays with the riots that broke out in Uganda. An Asian man in Uganda yesterday and two other people were killed during a protest over a plan to cut down nearly a third of a rainforest reserve to grow sugarcane.
Police chiefs had approved yesterday 's march, called to protest plans to cut down tens of thousands of acres of Mabira Forest to expand the estate of the local Sugar Company, Scoul.
Protest organizer Frank Muramuzi said the march began peacefully, before a "misunderstanding" with the police. All of a sudden everybody scattered and police opened fire with tear gas and live ammunition.
As scores of demonstrators hurled rocks at police in the pouring rain, officers rescued more than 100 Asian men, that included Sindhis, besieged in a Hindu temple and elsewhere, and rushed them to a police station. Dozens were arrested.
Some of them were inside the temple and the protesters started attacking them from outside.
The scenes were similar to those of 1972, when the late former dictator Idi Amin expelled Uganda's Asians.
Thousands have returned, but are viewed with suspicion by some Ugandans who resent their domination of many businesses.
One Indian supermarket owner who gave his name as Kumar said rioters pulled him from his motorbike then beat him.
The controversy began last year when President Yoweri Museveni ordered a study into whether to ax 17,000 acres or nearly a third of Mabira. (Mabira -- which has been a nature reserve since 1932 -- is one of Uganda's last remaining patches of natural forest).
The government's proposal angered some parliamentarians and residents. They argued that the environmental costs of slashing the rainforest would far exceed the economic benefits of the plantation
Private Reply to Pushpa Moorjani | | Apr 15, 2007 3:01 pm | | re: Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | # |
Saniya Kirpalani | | Until 1972, Asians constituted the largest non-indigenous ethnic group in Uganda. In that year, the Idi Amin regime expelled 50,000 Asians, who had been engaged in trade, industry, and various professions. In the years since Amin's overthrow in 1979, Asians have slowly returned. It was a bloody day indeed.
For an Indian (Sindhi) whose family has been through four coups prior to Museveni’s coming to power, I can simply say we are older then any ‘government in Uganda’, and have lived through a time when even other Ugandans would not dare to live. There were only five Indian families there then-three Ismalis and two Sindhi.
We saw a sloe evolution, over the last twenty years, as Museveni won the trust back of the Indians and went to the extent of returning the lost properties and businesses of most of the families exiled during the era of Amin. Togethr the Indians and Ugandans built back a powerful nation which today WB cites as a ‘successful example’
Today twenty years later I see resentment within the ranks. It’s not easy for me to ‘blame Ugandans’ or its government alone. Do understand, I am not making little of Devang Rawal’s death nor the loss of the other Indians who live in the region; to the contrary, it’s a deplorable thing indeed. But I urge the Indians to remember, we are guest and we have no right in taking down the heritage of a land we profit from.
I am disappointed in those Indians like who decide to be sponges on their host country. It was a reckless move by the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (Scoul), part of the Indian-owned Mehta group, to expand its sugar estates by cutting the Mabira rain forest- one of Uganda's last remaining patches of natural forest. It has been a nature reserve since 1932.
The government's proposal angered many in the country who allegedly felt the environmental costs of slashing the forest would far exceed the economic benefits of the plantation. It has been rashness on both the side of the corporate & NGOs (whose did not weigh out the far reaching consequence) and an opposition who was looking for fresh blood, Musevni’s regime should have also tempered their statement and understood public sentiments.
I am indeed hearted by Museveni’s statement "To attack, insult or damage the property of any Ugandan or guests of Uganda is something the government will not tolerate... Ugandans need 'foreigners' to develop our country. Nobody has a right to use violence against any other Ugandan or visitors to Uganda or their properties."
I do know that Indian families and business remains tense- not just Sindhi- but all Indians, but this time we should take a page out of our history and sit down to build bridges. My only plea is lets not become lone profiteer, its time to partake and give back to those communities we live in too.
Private Reply to Saniya Kirpalani | | Apr 15, 2007 4:25 pm | | re: re: Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | # |
Pushpa Moorjani | | Very true Saniya.
But the bridges cannot be built on lies! It now appears that Scoul has not been entirely frank about the reasons it wanted to have 7,100 hectares of Mabira Forest destroyed
Among the reasons the corporation stated in their letter to President Yoweri Museveni when making this controversial request was that they wanted to double production to 110 metric tonnes of sugar per year.
They did not mention that its current acreage has been drastically reduced following a failure to agree with its various landlords over lease fees, Scoul, probably, did not come to the table with clean hands. That suspected omission may border on dishonesty when viewed from a certain perspective. In deed, it almost wrecks the very integrity of whatever justification they had proffered.
Moreover, SCOUL maximizes profits through exploitation. Its workers are overworked yet they are paid meager salaries. How can Indian ‘foreigners’ make Uganda people rich?
Private Reply to Pushpa Moorjani | | Apr 16, 2007 11:13 am | | re: re: re: Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | # |
Saniya Kirpalani | | Without making the accusations, I have cited the same point. “I am disappointed in those Indians like who decide to be sponges on their host country. It was a reckless move by the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (Scoul), part of the Indian-owned Mehta group, to expand its sugar estates by cutting the Mabira rain forest- one of Uganda's last remaining patches of natural forest. It has been a nature reserve since 1932”
Lets say even the disclosures were good, do you thin an entire heritage should be bought down to service the ‘output of a private corporation’? Do you think the same thing is not happening in the Cocoa and Coffee production zones? Do you think it’s all Indians doing it?
In answer to your thought “Moreover, SCOUL maximizes profits through exploitation. Its workers are overworked yet they are paid meager salaries. How can Indian ‘foreigners’ make Uganda people rich?” I have already said “I do know that Indian families and business remains tense- not just Sindhi- but all Indians, but this time we should take a page out of our history and sit down to build bridges. My only plea is lets not become lone profiteer, its time to partake and give back to those communities we live in too.
You are seriously misinformed if you think Asian have not worked alongside the Ugandans to jointly build a better future. Right from the first supermarket, the first bank, the first school to the first hospital has been built by Indians. Most of the Indian business provide for over 42 % of the job opportunity of the region. They also pay the highest salaries.
Indians are also partnering the Ugandans and there are several respected families who work with the government and have done so for the last 25 odd years, but a lot more has to be done. History has shown neo colonialism does not work and exploitation is a thing of the past, wise corporate and businesses work with good governance and I can name the six top Indians in the country who I know have done the same. The history of the country and its relation with the Asians are still being researched by the people of the land and their expat populance.
Private Reply to Saniya Kirpalani | | Apr 18, 2007 4:00 pm | | re: re: re: re: Sindhis in Uganda under great stress! | # |
Pushpa Moorjani | | And now if Jay Mehta, husband of actor Juhi Chawla and group director of Mehta Group of Companies, of which SCOUL is a subsidiary, is to be believed, claims that his company’s expansion bid was not to be blamed for Uganda riots. He said that the Ugandan government had not even allotted any land to them at Mabira — one of Uganda’s last remaining patches of natural forest — for sugarcane cultivation.
Mehta claims that the Ugandan government was still considering their request and they had asked only for the portion of the forest that has already been depleted and vandalized by encroachers.
Mehta added, “We are fully aware of the importance of preserving forest. Before we requested the Ugandan government for the additional land, we planted 450 hectares of forest. Our plan is to develop 1,000 hectares of forest on land not suitable for cane cultivation.”
According to him, the riot in Kampala was sparked by an Indian motorist who knocked down a couple of children in the procession, which was allowed by the Ugandan government to stage a “peaceful” protest march. “To make matters worse, another Indian motorcyclist injured a local journalist, sparking mob fury against the Asians,” said Mehta.
Private Reply to Pushpa Moorjani | | |
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