From the Daily Monitor, a follow up to my last Amin post.

Uganda: What Idi Amin’s Image Tells Us About the World Thinking
…Never did it occur to the world that this image of Amin is largely and overwhelmingly false. This has taught me that the world is largely a gullible place. That is why I find it increasingly hard to take people seriously, no matter how “brilliant.” I would not be surprised, had he been alive, that even the great Albert Einstein would have believed that Amin killed 500,000 people.
I also don’t take seriously the claim that somehow Africans don’t generally keep records and so it is unfair to expect them to produce a list of 600 names of Amin’s victims….

We have to ask: if it is said that Amin killed 300,000 or 500,000 Ugandans, how did we arrive at that number? Whoever arrived at that staggering figure of 500,000 must have been doing some counting. They must have kept track of the victims. They should forward that list, if not the entire 500,000, then at least 600 names.

Four months ago I wrote to the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. That organisation published a report in May 1977 claiming that between 80,000 and 90,000 Ugandans had been killed by Amin.

If Ugandans are poor at keeping records, then we can at least count on the meticulous Swiss to keep files of all their published material. And yet to this day, I have not got a reply from Geneva. Many people have argued that it does not matter whether 20 people are murdered by a regime or 500,000 even one life is precious….