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Uganda: Heathrow Dogs Sniff Drugs Not 'Blackness'
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The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
OPINION
2 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Emmanuel D. Kavuma
I understand Kathrin Namutebi's frustration and inconvenience when her bags were, in her words, "ransacked" at London's Heathrow Airport as reported in a local daily. I am neither belittling the authenticity of Namutebi's claims nor am I questioning her integrity, since her "experience" is not unusual.
But in a one-sided story, people often misrepresent the facts to gain public sympathy. Take the example of a passenger travelling on a British passport who imagined that having one exempted her from answering Immigration officials' questions at Entebbe Airport! Her British passport was issued in Kampala. These passports then, unlike those issued in the UK, lacked some new technology, like the microchips code bars for the immigration staff to electronically scan them.
The photographs were detachable and since it was some time since hers had been issued, her passport photo was not the exact likeness of her look then.
The staff, justifiably suspicious, subjected her to further investigation. Instead of answering the questions, the passenger became paranoid and blathered contemptible tirades against the innocent staff.
If she had written in the press, she would have berated these officials for "incompetence" and "picking" on her. While the staff at Entebbe commendably handle passengers with utmost humility, they do stick to the regulations.
I am an ordinary person; the type the Langi or Acholi would call perengenye. This not withstanding, I never have problems whenever I travel on my Ugandan passport except, quite incredibly, in Kenya as I will later show.
Early in March this year, I travelled from Entebbe to Heathrow on British Airways. At Heathrow, there's quite some distance from the plane to the immigration desks, and along the way, there are government agencies and security personnel that carry out surveillance operations in pursuit of criminals, like the njaga transporters. We met three of them who never "touched" me, although I had a sizeable load of hand luggage. But they stopped a woman who was behind me and searched her bags. They would never have known if she was Ugandan or not because BA carries all nationalities.
With millions of passengers passing through Heathrow, the authorities can't search every luggage, which explains why other passengers, including Ugandans, were not "ransacked". In detecting and preventing crime, the security officials apply a random search criteria among the passengers and Namutebi happened to be among those picked.
But not so at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Sometime back, I arrived by Kenya Airways at this airport on my way to London. To our disdain, all the Ugandan passport holders were separated from the other passengers. We were made to queue while, with infinite patience, our passports were photocopied. Other passengers fixed us with suspicious stares like outcasts at the bottom of the pile. Kenya's segregation of Ugandans bore close parallels with the racists in the South Africa of the '60s at the height of Apartheid.
A visibly infuriated passenger asked the official why she photocopied only the Ugandan passports.
"I am working on strict instructions from "above," she responded. To our amusement, despite the predicament, another Ugandan asked if by "above," she was in direct communication with God for "instructions."
"No, sir, I meant the Kenyan authorities."
Had this happened at Heathrow, the blacks would have ganged up against the whites to vent their prejudiced anger and insults upon "racist" Britain.
I must say though that I don't purport to defend Heathrow's immigration authorities. It is not even my intention to discredit Namutebi's story although it is bigotry of her to believe that only blacks are "associated with drugs." The dogs here are trained to sniff drugs and not "blackness." I only wanted to show that each case merits individual consideration instead of generalizing.
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Emmanuel D. Kavuma, The author is a Ugandan who lives in the United Kingdom.
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