tv Our World BBC News January 21, 2023 4:30am-5:00am GMT
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to have broken all records. is all you this is bbc news, the headlines: a major meeting of ukraine's allies has ended without agreement on whether to send more tanks to kyiv. representatives of around 50 countries gathered at the us airbase in ramstein in germany to discuss co—ordinating military support. anti—abortion activists in washington have called for more restrictions on the termination of pregnancies at the country's annual "march for life". it's the first such event since the supreme court overturned federal abortion rights. the deputy head of the united nations has told the bbc there is some hope that women in afghanistan will be allowed to resume working for aid agencies after holding high level talks with the country's taliban rulers.
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women and girls have suffered some restrictions since they took over. the british prime minster has been fined by lancashire police for not wearing a seatbelt. rushi sunak removed his belt to film a social media video while travelling in the back of a car. number 10 said mr sunak "fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologised", adding that he would pay the fine. our political correspondent layla nathoo reports. one of my new year's promises to you promoting a government policy online. he to you promoting a government policy amine-— to you promoting a government policy online-— policy online. he was filmed in the back of _ policy online. he was filmed in the back of his _ policy online. he was filmed in the back of his ministerial - policy online. he was filmed in the back of his ministerial carl the back of his ministerial car as he drove through lancashire yesterday not wearing a
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seatbelt. on a whistlestop tour across the north of england the prime minister was supposed to be talking about money for dozens of community project. but this trip was soon overshadowed by questions over whether his enthusiastic social media message had taken them in the wrong direction.— the wrong direction. earlier ou the wrong direction. earlier you were — the wrong direction. earlier you were filmed _ the wrong direction. earlier you were filmed without. the wrong direction. earlier you were filmed without a i you were filmed without a seatbelt on your car. downing street yesterday _ seatbelt on your car. downing street yesterday said - seatbelt on your car. downing street yesterday said he - seatbelt on your car. downing street yesterday said he had l street yesterday said he had made an error ofjudgement in not being strapped in. but now he has been fined by lancashire police. in a statement to nine, number 10 said the prime ministerfully accepts number 10 said the prime minister fully accepts that this was a mistake and has apologised did it have because he will comply with the fixed penalty. this is the second time that rishi sunak has broken the law while government. as chancellor he was fined along with boris johnson for breaking covid rules at a gathering in downing street in june rules at a gathering in downing street injune 2020. tonight, labour�*s to be deleted described him as a total it was meant to be a day to
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focus on government giveaways. instead, the prime minister has been left with something unexpected to chew over. now on bbc news, our world: expelled from uganda. can you see yourself leaving that house, and do you remember what you did as you left? we were scared. 50 years ago, my family fled their home in uganda. all asian british citizens must leave uganda. - president idi amin gave ugandan asians 90 days to leave. the army people said, "just get quickly inside the car." most people took the bare minimum — a suitcase and a tiny amount of cash. my mum wasjust saying, "take the money out, throw it away." "mum, mum, it's money!" "no, just throw it now!" she must have left a lot behind. she did. we literally took nothing at all. i grew up hearing stories of a tropical paradise. but towards the end of their time there, my family's reality was very different.
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i must reorganise this country properly. - now, i'm going there with my mum and my aunt to understand more about what they lost, and how the expulsion impacted the country. you asking us questions, reha, but at that time, when you see how people run... is this from uganda? yeah. this is from uganda. they brought it with them. you put gas in here and then you'd, what...turn... paraffin. paraffin gas, yeah. i'm reha, a reporter for the bbc, and i'm looking into my family history. what was your favourite thing to do at home? at home, favourite things... actually, if you ask me, cooking. this is from uganda —
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we brought it with us. look, it's quite a lot, but i don't know you all of them. my family comes from uganda, they were expelled there in 1972 and moved here to the uk as refugees. i'm going back with my mum and my aunt, all three of us, for the first time to see where they lived, where they grew up, and basically take it all in and live through them. what's it called in swahili? cassava. mogo. mogo — mogo. so much of the language, the gujarati, that we speak at home is influenced by swahili. so most of the food we eat is very authentically ugandan indian or east african indian. it's very good, and good for the iron as well. i definitely feel ugandan, yes. i was born there, i am ugandan. we learned how to ride a bike overthere.
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the fruits over there is lovely and, yes, we had good fun, all of us. my grandparents — very old photo. my �*nana', my grandfather, he moved to uganda from india, pre—partition. he moved firstly by himself, and then a few years later, my �*nanima', my grandmother, my �*masi' and my �*mama', my oldest uncle, moved along with him. this is a very cool photo. this is my granddad, my �*nana'. that is my eldest uncle and my other uncles. you look how pretty. so pretty. this is me. this is of our house injinja, and i forgot to tell you that one day all the elders had gone to see a film,
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and they had started shooting right at everybody's houses, you know, where we were staying, injinja, and we had to hide under the table. in august 1972, president idi amin said god came to him in a dream and told him to expel all asians from the country. their main interest has been to| exploit the economy of uganda. we feel bad, very badly shocked, like, you know, what we are going to do it. for the 80,000—strong population, his dream became a nightmare. general amin has promised he'll make those ignoring . the ultimatum feel as though they're sitting on fire. - i was at home when i heard that — my dad and my brother said to us that we have to pack our
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things and go as we cannot stay in uganda any more now. the british high commission. passport office here has been besieged by hundreds- and hundreds of asians holding british passports. 16 members of my family took thejourney from entebbe airport to the uk. so we had to have two cars and we had the army people take us to entebbe airport, they escorted us. i definitely felt something was wrong. why would an army person sort of escort us to entebbe to come to london? i think uganda will benefit more if asians are out of i uganda. my family lived in a bubble, in their own echo chamber. they were surrounded mostly by brown people. the dynamic between brown people and black people mostly where they lived was that
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of worker and boss. there's always been this hierarchy — white people at the top, brown people in the middle and black people at the bottom, and this has existed in uganda under the british. i personally felt that people in uganda, asians and ugandans were mixing quite well together. so much of what they tell me is wrapped around nostalgia, and i really want to dig deeper than that and find out what life was like there for them and why they had to leave. done. i'm going to uganda and i'm really, really excited. i'm looking forward to meeting all the people, ugandans over there, i'm looking forward to going and seeing the house that i was born in, and the house injinja that we were living
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in the last... what was really emotional for me was seeing my mum and my aunt. they paid their respects in a very hindu way, which you usually do to the feet of elders. it was a really surreal and very lovely moment to witness because i've never seen them do that before. going to see our house in kakira, that's where i was born. i want to go inside, i want to see what it's like. and, yeah, i'm really looking forward to it. i want to remember everything that was — when i was young. do you think, when you're there, you'll unlock more memories that you can't remember? ah, yes, i think so. let's see. let's get over there and then see what i remember and what i don't.
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what's changed ? what was there before? when we lived here, it wasn't anything like that. what was this place before? it was completely flat and so nice and greenery there. but now...it was a com... that's why i sooked, you know. and first i feel like, you know... what — what's this? what are you feeling? like i'm feeling like, you know, start to cry, you know... why are you feeling like crying? yeah, because they build up so nicely, but still, you know, it's not the same, not the same at all. all right, we're entering kakira. this is kakira. kakira is an estate, it's owned by the madhvani family. this is where they produce sugar cane, where they plant sugar cane.
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essentially, kakira is a town within itself, and everyone who works for the madhvani family lives in kakira. my grandfather arrived in uganda some time in the late 1920s. he lived and worked here. don't say hi to the camera. hi! hi, camera! the madhvani family leftjust before the expulsion as tensions started to brew. but like many ugandan asians, they were invited back by the government in �*80s to help rebuild the economy. we're actually very, very happy that you got your — madhvani's factories and everything back. so, when we came back, the policy was to assist l the private sector. why did you decide to come back to kakira? more emotional at that time. there was absolutely no hope for the country. i but we are ugandans. see, i was born here.
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so, you know, it's like| a magnet, it pulls you. what happened was it started off as an emotional trip - and then it became a commercial trip. i the government policy was that "we took away the assets - from the asians, all- the properties belonging to asians should be given back". - and, you know, ithinkl what lacked before with the asians was they didn't do enough for the community. l i mean, some people would argue that indians benefited from this colonial structure that was put in place that had indians as thee middle man, but you would also say that — we've moved beyond that. oh, yes. i think that's all over. i mean, you just have - to look at young ugandans. their aspirations. their wants are very muchl similar to what you want in london.
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in 1961, uganda gained independence from the british, and black ugandans were able to put their needs first. hello. i've come to meetjoel, who was here at the time of the expulsion. this is my shop. so, if we were talking about this sort of alley before the expulsion in 1972, would it be locals owning shops here, or it would it be indians owning shops here? it would be indians. since the return of asians to uganda, communities are more integrated. but some subtle tensions still exist. do you see indians who live here as ugandan as well? why not? and that's why some of these people came back. in uganda, are indians considered closer to whiteness or are they considered white? they are white, yes. and, in fact, most — most of them like it that way. laughs.
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the asians tend to look at us as either beggars, people who don't have anything. so, you feel that still exists today? yes, it does. oh, yes, it does. it does. so, why did the expulsion happen? why were ugandan asians blamed? indians have been in east africa since the 15th century. many were traders who settled in the region. but with the arrival of the british empire, their role changed. they were all victims of colonialism themselves, they were brought as endangered labourers to work on the railway, cheap labourers, they were put in that place to be used. so the british dividing their different subjects. indians were restricted or were promoted or were confined to the commercial sector, not the agricultural, because they were even not allowed to have land. so some africans felt
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that they were — it was not a level ground, that these investors were having undue preference, the government preference through policies. when idi amin became president in 1971, change came for everyone. some africans saw it as an opportunity to reverse that order. there were two sets of victims, each one going off in a different trajectory. asians have been - milking uganda's money. there isn't much literature around the expulsion and ugandan indian history, so i've come to the uganda society library to see what i can find and how much icanfind. i found idi amin�*s speech on the weekend of the 12th and 13th of august, in which he explains why
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he expelled asians — ugandan asians — and his opening paragraph reads, "no country can tolerate the economy of a nation being so much in the hands of non—citizens, as is the case in uganda today. no government can tolerate foreigners like asians in uganda, sabotaging the economy of the country and engaging in numerous forms of corruption." it's as though he's playing on the insecurities of locals, of ugandans, who felt already that there were hostilities and tensions arising. already, the 15 british immigration staff in. the passport office look likely. to be swamped as the pressure mounts and the anxieties of the asians are being. increased as they're - meeting delay, confusion, indecision, orfear something worse. j we're off to meet someone who means a lot to my mum
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and my aunt. they haven't seen each other in over 50 years. kadija used to work for a family friend of ours and we got to know her very, very well. i think she started working with them when she was about 14, 15 years old. yes, she was very young. she was very young. but absolutely lovely girl. she — she learned how to cook indian food and everything, and she's a really wonderful person. hello. hello, mama. hello. vesi — now you know! now you know, kalija. do you know who i am? it was very warming to see my mum and my auntie and kadija meet and just relive their younger years. they — it's like they
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all became kids again. and do you remember — i used to come to your house to teach the girls all the, you know, the dancing and everything, and i go stay there. see? you remember. what was really interesting talking to kadija was understanding the impact the expulsion and idi amin�*s government had on her life. she was beaten. 0k. yes, the soldiers came - and they said she is the one who kept the money, so she was beaten... j oh, my god. ..because they wanted the money _ the black ugandan population were often targeted by amin�*s soldiers, and human rights violations committed against them have been well documented.
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if you are inside the house, they come for you. - one week, she was sleeping with a kid in the bush- at the age of one week — the kid was one week. i police from jinja - came to look for her. oh, my god. it was really quite graphic and really heartbreaking to hear, and i think that's — that's what we tend to miss a lot when we talk about the expulsion or the expulsion under idi amin, is the impact that it had on the local population. it was good to see that she's not in a bad situation at all. she's living in a good place, she's got nice house, she's got nice environment and everything, but it's sad to know what happened to her after we asians left. what the army had done to her and everything, it was sad to know that. ok, kadija, bye—bye.
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thank you very much. thank you, my dear. so nice to see you. our last stop isjinja, where my family lived before they fled the country. it's also where most of mum's memories are, good and bad. to go to see jinja house was exciting because i felt that i'm gonna go and see everything in there exactly the same as it was, and be able to visualise my family there. we got to the house and we were quite profusely knocking on the door until someone came and very hospitably let us in without any questions. close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes. all right, i'm going to lead you in. keep them closed. you know, you have this excitement building up and my mum is walking
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through... wow! sitting room. yeah, sitting room. this was the sitting room over here. yes. and then, all of a sudden, the mood changes and she's very confused. she can't remember the layout of the house being like this. this wasn't there. no. this was my mum and dad's room over here. do you want to check if that's the same... do you mind? it's closed. it's closed — ok. it was hard to sort of walk in and it's completely changed, except for one room, which was my mum and dad's room, and that was locked, and that wasn't really nice because i couldn't see it and i was expecting to see that to...| don't know. i felt that my mum and dad would be there. what i wasn't prepared for was my mum's confusion and sadness. um...it was a lot. um, sorry.
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but this was a shower room, bathroom. it was emotional for me to sort of not see in there and i had to walk out of there. it was here, the car was somewhere round here. it's very sad that we can't see my mum and dad's room because that was the one that was very, very important to me cos i have lost my mum and dad and... this house has actually broken me up. they've made it, like... i have been really — yes, i've been very strong up till now, but seeing this house, it really broke me, it really broke me. your attachment to nanna and nanima was here. yes, it was. is that why you were crying? well, in a way, yes. i mean, we enjoyed ourselves so much and were here in this house. it's painful that you're with me and i can't even explain to you what it was like.
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until i came here and visualised my mum and my aunt's last days in uganda, i hadn't really understood how complex their time here had become. can you see yourself leaving that house and do you remember what you did as you left? the army people said, "just get quickly inside the car." they were checking each individual — my mum was the first one to go inside, and she came back and said, "take the money out, outside the window now." we literally took nothing at all except for our clothes, and that's all we had, and those clothes were not suitable for england. one of the few things they took with them was a picture from their temple. she has got a photograph in her room. nanima actually did take that picture, saying that, "i'm taking you out from the temple and taking it to where i'm going," basically, and she prayed over there, you know, to keep us safe.
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this picture doesn'tjust symbolise their struggles to get to the uk, but also their resilience to resettle in an unfamiliar place. maybe it was much bigger. first, they left india for uganda, then uganda for the uk. hopefully now they feel they belong. hello. well, overall, the weekend for most of us is going to remain pretty cold. we've also had some snow recently.
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here's a beautiful picture from wales, from gwynedd, a wonderful wintry scene. now, across the north—west of the country, it's actually going to be a little bit milder through the course of the night, particularly around the western isles of scotland and northern ireland. a southerly breeze here, cloudy with spits and spots of rain — so seven in stornoway by 6:00am on saturday, six in belfast. elsewhere across the country, that blue colour indicating the frost. now, the reason for this temperature difference is actually this tongue of milder air that's streaming in from the southern climes. and you can see it's in place across ireland, scotland, the north—west of england, and wales. elsewhere, towards the east, it's going to be colder. so let's summarise the weekend, then, with this tongue of milderair coming in from the south. south and eastern parts of the country will stay in the cold air. it'll be sunny. but north—western areas will be often cloudy, spits and spots of rain, and quite a bit milder. so here's the picture first thing on saturday — that weather front hugging north—western areas of the uk,
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that southerly breeze. elsewhere across the country, we've got sunny, crisp and cold weather. there could be some mist and fog lingering into the afternoon across parts of the midlands and northern england. so typical temperatures here around four degrees, but up to around nine or so in the western isles of scotland. let's have a look at the weather on sunday. high pressure in charge of the weather in the south—east of the country. but in the north—west there you can see a weather front affecting scotland, which actually will also affect the irish sea coasts, western fringes of wales and also the far south—west of england. so here, in that southerly wind, temperatures could actually make double figures, at least in one or two spots. the further east or south—east you are, the temperatures will be quite a bit lower. so look at that — struggling in london, norwich and hull. only around 2—3 degrees above freezing, so really quite a raw day for some of us on sunday. here's monday's weather map. high pressure in charge of the weather, in fact,
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all the way from western europe through central europe, into russia too. so lots of fine weather. and there is an indication that here in the uk the temperatures will recover a little bit as we go through the course of the week, perhaps making double figures in some spots. that's it from me, have a good weekend.
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this is bbc news. i'm monika plaha. our top stories: western defence chiefs fail to agree on the provision of advanced tanks to ukraine. the americans say it's still under discussion. anti abortion activists have marched through washington calling for further restrictions on the termination of pregnancies. chris hipkins is set to become new zealand's new prime minister replacing jacinda ardern who stood down on thursday. a top un official tells the bbc she believes progress is being made towards reversing bans on women taking part in public life in afghanistan. we are going to use this to push the door wider and not allow it to close, and not allow it to close because it would close on the women of afghanistan.
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