Tigranna Zakaryan to provide only for women to have the right to acquire citizenship through their husbands, and not vice versa (Article 4(1)(4)). 2.4. The Amin regime and mass expulsions Following Uganda’s independence, the policy of the Obote government was to privilege Ugandan over other workers, including unskilled black East Africans who had migrated within the zone of free movement during the colonial era. In 1970, many East Africans, mainly Kenyan Luos, were expelled. 12 One of the most notable episode in Uganda’s postindependence era with regard to citizenship deprivation was the mass expulsion of Ugandan citizens and residents of South Asian descent, in 1972, under president Idi Amin Dada who seized power by military coup in 1971.13 The expulsion of this community has been commonly analysed by scholars as a consequence of the visible wealth and class mobility of South Asians. It has been argued that this was a direct result of the administrative repression the Ugandan colonial state inflicted toward African traders while encouraging Indian traders. Hence, the status of Uganda’s Indian community, and the state-driven discrimination they were subjected to following independence, was not as much a racial or ethnic issue, as it was socio-economic.14 The 1969 census reported that of the total just under 75,000 people of Asian descent living in Uganda just over 25,000 were Ugandan citizens. It is estimated that approximately twelve thousand to fifteen thousand believed they had Ugandan citizenship based on Article 7(1) of the 1962 Ugandan constitution, which stated that citizenship was automatically acquired on the day of independence by every person born in Uganda, provided that one of their parents was also born in Uganda.15 Around 25,000 had applied to register as citizens within the two year deadline established for those born in Uganda without one parent also born there, but only 11,000 had been granted citizenship by this route. 16 Over twelve thousand applications for Ugandan citizenship by registration were made before 9 October 1964 but never reviewed because there was no legal timeframe for which these application were meant to be processed.17 President Amin announced that Asians resident in Uganda would be expelled for ‘sabotaging Uganda's economy and encouraging corruption’.18 Due to international pressure, President Amin qualified his expulsion policy by suggesting that he did not intend on expelling Asians who were Ugandan citizens should they present documents verifying their citizenship. This proceeded with a brief verification period in which any Asian claiming Ugandan was a citizen of Uganda otherwise than by virtue of this paragraph, at the time of that person’s birth or, in case of the father’s death before that person’s birth, at the time of the father’s death”. 12 Ali Mazrui, Casualties of an Underdeveloped Class Structure: The Expulsion of Luo Workers and Asian Bourgeoisie from Uganda, in William A. Shack and Elliott P. Skinner (eds.) Strangers in African Societies, University of California Press, 1979. 13 This history is set out in Bronwen Manby, Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging, Hart Publishing, 2018, chapter 7.3. 14 Hundle, Anneeth Kaur. 1970s Uganda: Past, Present, Future, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 53, no. 3 (2018): 455-75. 15 K. C. Kotecha, The Shortchanged: Uganda Citizenship Laws and How They Were Applied to Its Asian Minority, International Lawyer (ABA) 9, no. 1 1975): 1-29, pp.1 and 5. 16 John Jean Barya, Reconstituting Ugandan Citizenship under the 1995 Constitution: A Conflict of Nationalism, Chauvinism and Ethnicity, Centre for Basic Research, Kampala, 2000, p.55. 17 Kotecha, op cit, p.6. 18 Quoted in Kotecha, op cit, p.1. 4 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/8 - © 2020 Author