Amin threatens Britain

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33933, 28 August 1975, Page 13

Amin threatens Britain

(New Zealand Press Association)

NAIROBI, August 27.

President Amin of Uganda has threatened Britain with new reprisals if a book by a British lecturer, Denis Hills, that is critical of Field Marshall Amin is published in Britain.

The Uganda Broadcasting Corporation said today that President Amin had threatened to call off talks on compensation for seized British property and assets in Uganda, a former British colony. The radio said that President Amin had read a report on the first serialised excerpt from the still-unpublished book. “The White Pumpkin.” In this extract, Mr Hills says that the Ugandan people have succumbed to tyranny. The book is scheduled to be published in late September or October. Mr Hills said that the Ugandans who cheered when Amin took power in a military coup in January, 1971, did not realise they were applauding the end of their civil liberties. He also wrote of “the inhumanities of Amin’s Government” without giving details.

Mr Hills, aged 61, who lived in Uganda for 11 years from 1964, was sentenced to death by Field Marshal Amin for treason over the book’s

manuscript. He was released last July 10 after more than three months in detention after a flight to Kampala by the British Foreign Secretary (Mr James Callaghan). The treason charge was centred on Hills’s description of President Amin in his book as “A Village Tyrant.” Mr Hills said after his release that he had deleted the offending words.