Foreigners Flee Uganda, Tell of ‘Shooting, Looting’

Soon after rebellious elements of the army seized control of Uganda’s government last Saturday, a dozen soldiers appeared at the house of an Indian family on the outskirts of Kampala, the capital.

“They made me, my wife and my two children lie on the floor,” Meddy, the head of the family, recalled Wednesday. “Then they took everything in the house--the television, the video, the clothes from the closets, the pots and pans, blankets, shoes, even the covers from the cushions on the couch.

“When they finished, they made my wife and me pack everything they had collected into three cars. We did this while they stood by pointing guns at us.”

Meddy left Uganda with his family Wednesday, unharmed but considerably poorer. They arrived in this Kenyan border town in one of several convoys that brought 300 foreigners--citizens of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, West Germany, Italy, India, Somalia, Tanzania and Ghana--to safety from a country that shows every sign of continuing the turmoil, chaos and bloodshed that have characterized its last 15 years.

The ragtag collection of 60 vehicles was escorted 125 miles to the border by Ugandan soldiers. The new military rulers had sealed the border and closed the airport after the coup, but the new head of government, Gen. Tito Okello, guaranteed the safety of foreign nationals and agreed to let them leave Wednesday.

“We evacuated in large part simply because Kampala is still recovering from the effects of the coup,” U.S. spokesman Charles Redman said. “Public services are not available in all parts of the city. Shooting and looting have not been brought to a complete halt. It will take some time for the new government to establish itself and for conditions to return to normal.”

Meddy has seen it all before. He fled Uganda in 1972, with thousands of other Ugandan residents of Indian or other East Asian descent, when Idi Amin, the dictator of the time, banished all the Asians from the country and confiscated their property.

He returned five years ago, when Milton Obote--who was ousted Saturday as president--invited the Asians back and promised to settle their property claims. The settlements never came, but hundreds in the meantime returned.

Under a blazing sun Wednesday, Meddy hauled two suitcases--the belongings salvaged from his pillaged house--from the baggage hold of a bus and dragged them to the shade of a tree in the compound where Kenyan customs officials were processing the evacuees from Kampala.

“Please do not use my real name,” he said. “You see, I am planning to go back again.” (Meddy is not his real name.)

While he spoke, another busload of expatriates arrived. All the foreigners, including 62 Americans, were granted safe passage by the commanders of the same Ugandan army that had gone on what almost all these grateful travelers described as a three-day rampage after the coup.

None had been hurt; virtually all were frightened.

“The looting itself was totally uncontrollable,” said Michael Colin Bishop, a British water systems engineer, who arrived in Kampala on a business trip three days before the coup erupted Saturday.

From a hotel at the edge of downtown Kampala, Bishop said he watched the soldiers envelop the city in an orgy of shooting, theft and beer drinking.

“The shooting and the looting were totally indiscriminate,” he said. “As nearly as I could tell, they were taking everything in sight.”

American’s Evaluation

An American woman, a missionary from Florida who was reluctant to give her name, watched the coup unfold from the eastern city of Jinja, where her house was only two miles from a main base of the Ugandan army. To her amazement, the soldiers looted the homes of even the poorest citizens.

“To my mind, there are two kinds of Ugandans,” she said. “One kind is the gentlest people in the whole world. The other kind are the most brutal people in the whole world. I saw these soldiers going into the houses of people who had almost nothing and take away their tables and chairs. These were the houses of people with no jobs, no money, no food and nowhere to go.

“How they could do these things to their own people is just unimaginable to me.”

Some of the Americans who arrived in the convoys from Kampala were U.S. Embassy personnel or had worked in various American aid projects in Uganda. A staff of about a dozen embassy officials, including Ambassador Allen C. Davis and John Bennett, the deputy chief of mission, remained in the capital; about 200 U.S. citizens also chose to stay in Uganda.

Most of the Americans who came out Wednesday said they had spent most of the recent days in their homes.

Kept Out of the Way

Kathryn Gaudet, 43, of Folsom, N.J., who works for a World Bank educational project, stayed indoors from Saturday to Tuesday.

“We are not sure what is going to happen now in Uganda,” she said. “That’s why we’re leaving. Our food supplies were running low and there was no water. I went to the market yesterday, and there were only a few moldy carrots that someone had swept up off the streets. Our water had gone bad, and when it rained yesterday, we rushed out to collect water in buckets for drinking and washing.”

Some of the Americans connected with the U.S. mission in Uganda seemed reluctant to speak of their experiences, having been warned by an embassy official at the border against making comments that might be considered critical of the new regime.

“It’s their country, and what happened, happened,” said an American woman who declined to give her name.

Other returnees were not so circumspect.

“I think it is going to be a bloodbath,” an Italian man commented.

And indeed, just hours after the first expatriates arrived at the border, there were reports of armies once again on the move in Uganda. Troops said to be loyal to the ousted President Obote were reported to have gathered in the north of the country--Obote’s home territory--and the new leader, Gen. Okello, was believed to have sent a unit of troops to engage them. Other military action, possibly involving other Obote supporters, was reported in the west.

Muwanga Named

The government also announced that Obote’s vice president and minister of defense, Paulo Muwanga, has been appointed interim prime minister, a move that seems likely to arouse the wrath of the guerrilla forces of the Uganda National Resistance Army, which has been fighting the Obote government for almost five years.

Meddy, the Indian businessman, predicted that the guerrillas, who are commanded by former Defense Minister Yoweri Museveni, “could walk in at any time” and seize control. “I don’t see what could stop them. They are more organized than the people in charge now.”

Meddy said he still hopes that someday he can do business in an atmosphere of peace and security in Uganda.

“I had six stores in Kampala,” he said. “Four of them were blown up, bombed. I do not know the loss. Maybe a million dollars. What can I do? I spent the years between 1972 and 1979 in Toronto. But times were difficult in Toronto, and I knew I could make a living here if the security situation was good. So I came back. If there is peace, I will come back again.”

Meddy’s wife returned to Kampala only two weeks before the coup. In the last five years, she only made brief visits, but, she said, she planned this time to stay. She brought her 7-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

“I am going back to Toronto,” she said, “and I am never coming back here.” She nodded toward her husband and said, “He can go back if he wants to.”

Her son ran up to her, carrying a bottle of cold soda pop.

“It was terrible,” she said. “My son woke up in the middle of the night--last night when it was quiet--and came running to me saying, ‘Mommy, they are coming.’ No, I am never coming back.”