Ugandans safe as London burns

LONDON BURNS: Policemen look at a bus set ablaze by rioters in London (LEFT) while a building goes up in smoke (INSET). PHOTO by AGENCIES

Ugandans living in various UK cities blazing with fast-spreading night riots are safe, according to preliminary information gathered by this newspaper.
“We have kept in very close contact with our people but we have had no reports of Ugandans being affected by the riots as yet,” said Mr Isaac Sebulime, Uganda’s deputy High Commissioner to London.

In various telephone interviews, half-a-dozen Ugandans residing in various parts of London said they were safe - and know of no fellow citizens arrested or affected otherwise by the disturbances. Mr Julius Mucunguzi, a media officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat, and a resident of New Burnet in North London, said: “I do not know of any Ugandan that has been directly affected but that is not to say none may have been affected. We are all watching the developments.”

It emerged last evening that a 26-year-old man shot earlier in Croydon, South London, passed on yesterday, becoming the first fatality. The riots, reportedly fanned by youths authorities described as “criminals”, broke out after police on Thursday allegedly shot dead Mark Duggan, a resident of Tottenham, north London.

Duggan was a Briton of black descent.
Late Duggan’s family, perturbed by police reluctance to account for the killing, organised a peaceful demonstration which vigilantes then hijacked and converted into a race to ransack shops, many of which they torched. “The rioters are very angry and ruthless the way they are fighting,” said Ms Grace Nyamahunge, a Monitor Publications employee who is on holiday in London.

Many of the protestors were reported to be high on drugs and alcohol. Majority were drawn from run-down neighbourhoods with existing high unemployment and crime levels and limited economic opportunities, lending credence to claims the riots probably manifest the stress of economic and social exclusion.
As a first-time visitor, Ms Nyamahunge said she was safe in Canary Wharf – London’s financial hub - “but shocked such a brutality could happen in a developed country like the UK”.

“I am wondering if I am safe here,” she said. Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his summer holiday and announced upon return to the capital yesterday that some 16,000 police officers would be on London streets by last night to stem further violence. A Metropolitan Police Spokesperson told Daily Monitor by telephone that the past three days have been “the worst wave of criminality London has seen in a very long time.”

More than 400 people had been arrested and 69 charged while an unspecified number cautioned, the officer said. The UK Parliament has been recalled from recess and is due to sit tomorrow to debate the “sickening scenes”. Ms Jacqueline Ondoga, a Ugandan who resides in Woolwich, south-east London, said the main shopping centre in their neighbourhood is now a no-go area because police declared it a “crime scene”.

It has been sealed off after rampaging youth torched banks and phone shops. The landmark Weatherspoon Pub and state-of-the-art Woolwich centre which just opened last August have been destroyed, Ms Ondoga said. “It’s terrible…everything happened overnight, so quickly. You can’t know who is the victim or the perpetrator.”

In East London, which most immigrants, including Ugandans, call home, all was yet calm according to Mr Kennedy Javuru, who has just completed his PhD studies at London Metropolitan University. He said the rioters, mostly 14 to 20-year-olds, target high-end shops where they can steal pricey wares. “They are not attacking people’s homes,” said Mr Javuru, who resides at Forest Gate (Stratford) in East London.

“Because most of the rioters are blacks, it has put us in a tight corner. Being black and a foreigner, everyone around would look at you suspiciously.”

No justification?
London Mayor Boris Johnson called the perpetrators a “tiny minority” without “ideological justification”. “We will do our utmost to make sure nothing like this ever happens again,” The Guardian quoted him as having said. The rioters, he said, should experience punishments that “they will bitterly regret”.

Mr Joel Kibazo, a Ugandan working as a senior public affairs consultant in London, said the mayhem was “very unusual but we are quite fortunate that we have not been touched”. There was yet no report of Ugandans caught in the riots, either as outlaws or victims, including in Croydon which saw the worst meltdown Monday night. It is estimated some 6,000-7,000 Ugandans live in the United Kingdom.

In 2008, unruly youth or yobs, caused terror on London streets by stabbing dead people indiscriminately, forcing the Metropolitan Police to upgrade knife attacks higher than terrorism on the crime list then.