The contributors to Escaping Idi Amin hardly make any direct comparisons to the present day. They don’t say: look, this part of the story is what Britain is now heading towards. This part is where America is already. These are the same words you can hear across the western world in 2026. They don’t need to. The parallels are obvious and deeply shaming, and, in any case, the story of Uganda viciously expelling its Asian community in 1972 is a humbling terror on its own terms.
The star witnesses are four people who would become British citizens, but were Ugandans born and bred when, in 1971, army commander Idi Amin took control of a country that was the only home they had ever known. Bharti, Harminder and Paresh were aged between nine and 11; Maz, who has died since filming his interview for this two-part documentary, was in his early 20s.
