Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer who served as the President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He is considered one of the most brutal despots in world history. His rule was characterised by rampant human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. Amin did not write an autobiography, and he did not authorize an official written account of his life.
About Idi Amin in brief
Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer who served as the President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Popularly known as the \”Butcher of Uganda\”, he is considered one of the most brutal despots in world history. Amin’s rule was characterised by rampant human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. Amin did not write an autobiography, and he did not authorize an official written account of his life. Amin went into exile, first in Libya, then Iraq, and finally in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death on 16 August 2003. Amin was born in Koboko to a Kakwa father and Lugbara mother. In 1946, he joined the King’s African Rifles of the British Colonial Army as a cook. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, taking part in British actions against Somali rebels in the Shifta War and then the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. During his years in power, Amin shifted from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable support from Israel to being backed by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East Germany. In 1975, Amin became the chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, a Pan-Africanist group designed to promote solidarity among African states. In 1979, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere had his troops invade Uganda; they captured Kampala on 11 April 1979 and ousted Amin from power. According to Fred Guweddeko, a researcher at Makerere University, Amin was the son of Andreas Nyabire, a member of the Kakwa ethnic group, who converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam in 1910.
He named his first-born son after himself. Amin joined an Islamic school in Bombo in 1941. After a few years, he left school with only a fourth-grade English-language education, and did odd jobs before being recruited to the army by a colonial army officer. He was promoted to corporal, then sergeant in 1953, then 2nd class afande 2, the highest possible rank for a black African soldier in the British colonial Army. In 1959, he was made afande class 2, the highest rank for black African soldiers. In 1961, he became an assistant cook at the same time as receiving military training as an infantryman. In 1963, he took up the post of Commander of the Uganda Army in 1965. He became aware that Ugandan President Milton Obote was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, so he launched a military coup in 1971 and declared himself President. In the late 1970s, there was increased unrest against his persecution of certain ethnic groups and political dissidents, along with Uganda’s very poor international standing due to Amin’s support for the terrorist hijackers in Operation Entebbe. Some sources have described Amin as being of mixed Kakwa-Nubian origin. Other unconfirmed sources state Amin’s year of birth from as early as 1923 to as late as 1928.
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