By fazale laxmidhar:

“My grandfather who came to Uganda to call it home in 1800th., used to tell us, some Ugandan races, used to kill one another and were man-eaters. This frightened many Asian from settling in Uganda. It is in Ugandan history that some tribes were man-eaters and there wer no laws to protect anybody from being eaten by their fellow Ugandan.”

I disagree with API when they come up with a story attacking Asians in this way, and making them look like they enslaved the black Ugandans. I find this writing not relevant to the situation during Idi Amin’s time.
Either this writer was not born during that time or never understood the facts of situation during that time. He is very wrong to write this article, being bias to only, few interviewed people, he calls them Slaves of Asians.

I am reacting to this story below:

• Link: Was Idi Amin really bad when he chased the Asians out of Uganda?

I wonder how many, chased Asians ( who were Ugandan born Citizens), API interviewed, before writing this article. It’s all wrong and with a one-sided conclusion of the writer’s perceptions. I also wonder whom he is trying to please by putting others down without knowing facts or reading History of the country.
 
He may have never learnt about the  class system in Human races and this is a law on Nature. There are poor people, middle class and rich or Elite. You cannot generalise all as the same because they all behave differently in their surroundings.
 
I wonder how many Elite Ugandans sit down with their poor beggars and share same food together even in today’s Ugandans. I may even wonder if they also practise same class system with them.
 
This should answer your writing that among black Ugandans, there are people who are first class, we call the rich or Elite, or go by their tribes and third class Ugandans who may be beggar’s class like you mentioned, of  those in India.
 
You also need to know any Indian or as you call them Asians, who were in Uganda all were different kind of Asians, they were very much Ugandans than Indians. They were in Uganda before you were born.

They were business class from 1800 and on, not like the chinese who are coming in the country now.
 
And if we talk about the 1800th., the Ugandans were also believing in class systems, there were kings of different regions and some were just ordinary followers. I could say third class citizens, but black Ugandans as well just like their Kings.
 
My grandfather who came to Uganda to call it home in 1800th., used to tell us, some Ugandan races, used to kill one another and were man-eaters. This frightened many Asian from settling in Uganda. It is in Ugandan history that some tribes were man-eaters and there wer no laws to protect anybody from being eaten by their fellow Ugandan.
 
One thing you need to understand is that Asians who lived in Uganda were just feeling as Ugandan as any Ugandan today, Even today I hold a citizenship of another country, my new country’s passport says I was Ugandan born.
You need to tell me how I can ever change this. I also have Ugandan Birth certificate to prove that.
Now lets talk about Idi Amin. May be he was as smart as you are who has this article published:  How can any body throw Ugandans out of country? You have to believe in a dream. Why don’t you right about his dream?
 
Yes, Ugandan Asians practised class system in their on way. Some were upper class and some were middle class and lower class among themselves. Also some practised by their religious beliefs and wealth. However, they were there
for many years, some into their third generation - born there, they should not be compared with any other Asians, they were Ugandans first. If some of them have decided to come back to Uganda it a good fortune for the country that they still strongly believe in because they were born there, and may be an asset to country.
 
Uganda economically does not have much to offer to a wise businessman. A wise Businessman can do better in any other country given the same environment and I can assure you that being a third generation Ugandans I know, some are far better in their new settlements and have done much better than what their parents did in Uganda, economically.
 
This is not, because they are Ugandans, but they were properly nurtured  as good business people from Uganda, and they have proved to their new country, how well nurtured they are ,after being thrown out, without any reason and due to a dream of a “so-called wise-man” Idi Amin.
 
In your article you write: “A big problem is the fact that the Asian community in Africa stick to themselves and even in marriage because as Amin said, they are not ready to be integrated with the Africans.”

I say that nobody has any rights over other person’s beliefs. The above statement is true, in its belief, you need to know that among Asians, also there is class system, they just don’t marry each other without knowing the class. Example: Muslim Asian may not marry Hindu Asian, even if they look the same in color. Upper class Asian will not marry a lower class Asian. You are Educated, you must have read it before.
 
As you continue in your article, you also write: “They should be welcomed as long as they understand that the black Ugandan is no longer going to be their slave.”
 
You need to read history before publishing. In no country do I see slaves, you are degrading yourself with this statement.

Yes, if you have somebody working for you at a lower salary, levelled to their experience, you call him slave labour?. You need to know that every job position has its rate of earnings, If a Black Ugandan Elite hires any help for himself, does he pay him any different from any Asian?  How come you think any different of Asian engaging in slave trade.
Normally people  move to, where they get better pay. I am sure, if you were working in western country, doing the same writing job, you would be, earning much more than what you make now, does that mean you are slaving yourself now or that’s, just what your work can pay where you are.
 
I am saddened by your writing, about the Asians of Uganda. To you it looks like they were just recent immigrants like the chinese people. People like me were Ugandan born, I should have same rights you have under International law. They were just not somebody, Idi Amin threw them away at gun- point, from country they were born and had citizenship. I had a gun on my head to sign some papers – it was a machine gun. I had no idea what I was signing then, but I just was told to sign it. Most of the Asian Ugandans did this. Why don’t you find out and right about it.
 
Stop insulting them by calling them Asians. Yes they were brown Ugandans, just like Buganda, Busoga, Toro people, Langi and so on…
 
My last word of advice to you is ….Please Do not insult your own citizens, you are being racist.
 
 
Below:

A photograph of people from 1945, and my grandfather is in that picture sitting in front raw with the King of Busoga, Mr W W k Wilberforce Nadiope, who was a family friend, and always had visited us, when in town, he was welcome to my mother’s cooking which he loved and always honoured with great respect. 

http://www.africanpress.me - Asians enjoyed with Kings of Uganda before Idi Amin kicked them out of the country

 End

Photo: UNAIDS

Swaziland’s shortages of HIV drugs, testing kits and lab supplies has given rise to a new generation of activists, including discontented nurses

A new wave of HIV activism is rising in Swaziland as people living with HIV take to the streets in protest, many for the first time in their lives, over continued shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.

Swaziland ‘s deepening financial crisis is taking a toll on service delivery, and the country is experiencing an unprecedented number of protests over issues such as school closures and a lack of HIV treatment. While Africa’s last absolute monarchy does not allow formal political opposition to operate, a new brand of HIV activism may be taking hold as anger mounts over a lack of ARVs.

“People living with HIV and AIDS are more politically active,” said Thandi Nkambule, director of the Swaziland Network for People with HIV and AIDS (SWANEPHA), an umbrella body. He noted that there are similarities between Swaziland’s newfound HIV activism and established movements in neighbouring South Africa.

“The leaders of the HIV support groups are joining the marches because they know that [government] leadership lacks the political will to meet the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS.” About a quarter of all adult Swazis are living with HIV and about 47,000 patients nationally were on ARVs at the end of 2009, according to UNAIDS.

Shortages of HIV programme supplies in Swaziland began making headlines in mid-2011. Media reports have largely attributed stock-outs to reduced revenues from the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), but the country also opted not to apply for funding in Round 10 from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Instead, it chose to assume financial responsibility for HIV treatment itself, at a time when SACU revenues were already projected to decline. Domestic funding has proved insufficient to back this decision.

Rising voices on the ground

Thandi Khumalo has been on ARVs for a year. Earlier in 2011 she took part in her first trade union protest as part of a “Week of Global Action” to press for political reform in Swaziland.

“The clinic where I go has never run out of ARVs, like some other places that have been hit by the government financial crisis, but I know people in our support group who have experienced interruptions,” she said during a demonstration.

“I have never been involved in politics… [but] we all live in fear that this will happen to us – that is why I am doing this political march. Something has to change in the way this country is run, or we will die,” Khumalo told IRIN/PlusNews. “This is survival for me.”

The Ministry of Health has disputed allegations that Swaziland is experiencing sporadic shortages of ARVs, and Health Minister Themba Xaba recently said anyone experiencing stock outs should contact him personally. The minister also alleged that pro-democracy groups have used allegations of ARV stock-outs for political gain, but activists disagree.

“The shortages of medicines and basic supplies in hospitals are real – that is why the nurses staged a protest action this year,” said SWANEPHA member Solomon Thwala, who added that SWANEPHA members have been verifying and reporting stock-outs that the government continues to deny.

In August the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) gave the country US$7 million in emergency funding, but this was only for first-line ARVs. Swaziland now has a buffer stock of first-line ARVs that should last until April 2012.

Prudence Simelane, a garment worker, also joined demonstrations to protest shortages of the drugs that she says have given Swazis hope, but which she feels can no longer be entrusted to government. “Swazis never cared about AIDS – they were told they would die if they got HIV and there was nothing they could do – but now we can live with HIV.”

She surprised herself by joining in recent demonstrations. “We have hope because of the ARVs - people are thinking about their lives, and about the future,” Simelane said. “That is why we are so frightened – because we can’t trust government to keep us supplied with drugs.”

jh/llg/he
source www.irinnews.org

Photo: rapidacid/flickr

In 2010, one out of four sex workers in the touristic island of Bali was infected with HIV

Bali’s dramatic increase of HIV prevalence among sex workers has changed the face of the epidemic on this famed tourist destination of 3.9 million local residents, NGOs say.

In 2010, 25.9 percent of Bali’s 3,945 sex workers – those working in brothels or on the streets mostly in the inner-island town centre known as Denpasar – were living with HIV, up from 1.6 percent in 2000, according to the provincial health department.

The HIV prevalence rate among sex workers nationwide in 2007 was 10.4 percent and 4.6 percent among “indirect” sex workers, such as those in massage parlours, karaoke bars and places not known primarily for selling sex, according to a UNAIDS report on Indonesia. 

The virus is taking hold of the general population in Bali as some 100,000 clients – mostly heterosexual Indonesian men – have sex with an estimated 6,000 sex workers and then go home to their 70,000-odd partners.

“I want Jakarta [capital and seat of national government] to look at the problem,” said Dewa Wirawan, director of the Kerti Praja Foundation (KPF) and one of Bali’s leading HIV experts, “They have to know this is our situation and maybe it’s not just in Bali.”

Paying for sex

The secretary and head of the government’s National AIDS Commission, Nafsiah Mboi, said tackling HIV is a high priority of the government, and the biggest “headache” she faces nationwide is HIV prevention due to the current biggest vehicle for HIV transmission – sex.

“One out of nine Indonesian men uses sex services. Those men have partners – male and female – who face risk of infection.”

Nationwide in 2009, the government estimated 3-5 million people, mostly men, paid for sex.

“There is not one [inhabited] harbour where people are not having sex, not one [inhabited] island without commercial sex,” she said. The geographical spread of Indonesia, with its 17,000 islands, makes it a challenge to get out both contraception and safe sex messages, she added.

“Those we reach we see progress, but there are so many sex workers we cannot reach.”

A Jakarta-based contractor currently distributes condoms to 137 districts nationwide. The goal is to reach 20,000 outlets. Of the country’s 480 districts, 300 have reported HIV infections and 90 percent of HIV infections are concentrated in the 137 targeted districts, Mboi reported.

A decade ago, Bali’s HIV problem – as was the entire country’s – was concentrated among intravenous drug users (IDUs). HIV in heterosexual men and women began its steady upward climb in 2005 in Bali, as the number of new infections of IDUs living with HIV steadily declined.

IRIN film: A Cleaner Fix

Indonesia is home to an estimated half a million injecting drug users. As many as 70 percent of them are HIV positive. Seen through the eyes of two former addicts, this film takes you into the world of the drug user. (March 2008) View Film

Needle exchange programmes as part of an overall “harm reduction” initiative targeting drug users since 2007 helped to bring down new drug-related infections, said Mboi.

Bali currently has close to 700 reported HIV cases in the general population, up from a little more than 100 five years ago, according to health department figures. But actual cases that go unreported may be in the thousands, NGOs and health workers say.

Safe sex hard sell

The shifting needs of HIV outreach have troubled aid workers and officials struggling to convince people to choose safe sex.

A 2010 KPF survey showed that 57 percent of sex workers in Bali had not consistently used a condom in the previous week.

“Drug users were easier to deal with – to tell them to use clean needles,” said Adi Mantara, director of Yakeba, a local HIV NGO.

Mantara, 29, contracted HIV in 2003 and now works with people at high risk of being infected. “But it’s difficult to get people who use sex workers to use condoms.”

Bali’s numbers fall below the average condom use among sex workers nationwide, almost 68 percent, as reported in 2007 by the government.

The feeling that HIV is an illness people “buy” is a persistent undertone at government meetings, Wirawan said.

Local support

“The commitment [by the government and local communities] to HIV prevention is very low,” said Wirawan, who has been working on HIV almost since Bali’s first reported case in 1987. “Efforts are increasing, but not enough to prevent an increase in cases like this [the current situation].”

The support for IDUs by local communities contrasts with the shunning of sex workers, Wirawan said, possibly in part because only 1 percent of the workers are Balinese and the rest mostly come from Eastern Java.

As the focus has shifted from IDUs to prevention among sex workers, gaining local support has not been easy, said Mboi of the National AIDS Commission.

“We still have a lot of opposition because of the image of the model woman in Indonesia,” she said. “The central government is placing a high priority on the HIV/AIDS issue, but with local governments support is very, very uneven. Local governments say they have other more important priorities such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea.”

nb/pt/cb source www.irinnews.org