Ugandan atrocities

Press, 25 February 1977, Page 12

Ugandan atrocities

Sir, —The reaction of furious outrage against President Amin following the death of the Archbishop of Uganda may well be justified, but the intensity of this feeling is in astonishing contrast to the reaction to the death of Mr Matthews Marwale Mabilane, who is reported in “The Press” (February 17) to have fallen from the tenth floor of the Johannesburg police headquarters, while trying to escape — the eighteenth such

death in less than a year. President Amin’s claim that the Archbishop died in a car accident, has been rejected with universal scorn. The South African police version of Mr Mabilane’s death has, at the most, met with polite scepticism. Is it unjust to infer that Western Christian nations apply two different criteria of judgment when the victims are a black Anglican Archbishop and a black South African, and the perpetrators a black African dictator and white Christians of European origin?—Yours, etc.. M. CREEL. February 23, 1977. Sir, —That President Idi Amin is a murderous despot is well known. His latest atrocities highlight the need for an international convention of nations to meet in order to draw up criteria agreeable to the majority, under which international intervention would be sanctioned to save a population from rulers of the ilk of President Amin. President Amin attracts attention because he is playing the part of a mad monster clown in a horror movie. Other evil rulers also torture and kill their subjects, but are not censured to the same degree because it is done with more sophistication and for timehonoured ideological reasons. The South African technique of official murder is unique—with tongue in cheek they ask us to believe that their black -ictims are continually jumping out of windows at police headquarters.—Yours, etc., L. F. ROSS. February 24, 1977.