This gripping and highly readable story of the Asians’ last days in Uganda interweaves the stories of Mahmood Mamdani’s friends and family with an examination of Uganda’s colonial history and the subsequent evolution of post-independence politics. The British colonial policy of divide and rule ensured that race coincided with class, effectively politicising the category of race.

The latest cover story of the New African examines the fight for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, featuring old and rare official records of British parliamentary debates in June 1806 in which both Houses of Parliament accepted that the UK, as a nation, had sanctioned and encouraged the slave trade and therefore it had responsibility to not only abolish it, but also 'atone' for it.

The Ugandan government and public officials are increasingly placing illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to silence critical voices, Amnesty International said in a new report. 'Stifling Dissent: Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Uganda' describes how journalists, opposition politicians and activists face arbitrary arrest, intimidation, threats and politically motivated criminal charges for expressing views deemed critical of the authorities.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti is seen by the local people as having a geopolitical agenda which harms the interests of the citizens, writes Deepa Panchang. Various civil society groups continue to call for withdrawal of the mission.

The International Labour Organisation has warned that a jobs crisis caused by the slowdown in the global economy threatens a wave of widespread social unrest engulfing both rich and poor countries. 'We have reached the moment of truth,' said Raymond Torres, director of the ILO International Institute for Labour Studies to mark the publication of the organisation's World of Work report. In a new 'social unrest' index, the ILO said there was growing unhappiness over the lack of jobs and anger over perceptions that the burden of the crisis is not being shared fairly. It noted that in over 45 of the 118 countries examined, the risk of social unrest is rising, with particular signs of tension in the EU, the Arab region and to a lesser extent Asia.

Kenya’s war against the Al-Shabaab militia has received support from the European Union, the US, Canada, Turkey, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Gulf Cooperation, who met Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his Somali counterpart Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and expressed their support for the military operation.

At least five people, including three children, have died after a refugee camp in southern Somalia was bombed, the MSF charity says. Kenya's army denied bombing the camp, saying it had been attacked by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab. A Kenya fighter jet only hit al-Shabab positions in Jilib, killing 10 of its fighters, an army spokesman said.

Hundreds of SPLM-North fighters were killed in clashes with the Sudanese army in South Kordofan state, local governor Ahmed Haroun said. 'Several hundred members of the movement were killed this day in an assault on the city of Teludi that was repelled by the armed forces,' the governor of South Kordofan, an oil-producing state and scene of frequent clashes, said. An army spokesman, Sawarmi Khaled Saad, said 'this morning more than 700 rebel fighters together with 12 officers tried to attack Teludi (east of the provincial capital Kadugli) to occupy it'.

Three members of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change who were last week charged with treason in connection with walk to work have been further remanded to Luzira Maximum Security Prison. The FDC women leader Ms Ingrid Kamateneti Turinawe along with Sam Mugumya, the political assistant to Dr Kizza Besigye and Mr Francis Mwijukye who heads the FDC youth wing appeared Monday 31 October at Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court before Mr Charles Sserubuga. The trio were produced in court for mention of their case but court remanded them until 14 November.

The 18-year-old Angolan youth who faces deportation despite having lived in the Netherlands since 2003, has made an emotional appeal to MPs to be allowed to stay. MPs will vote on whether Mauro Manuel, who has lived with the same foster family in Limburg since arriving as an unaccompanied refugee aged 10, can stay. The Christian Democratic party, which first supported Mauro and later changed its mind following pressure from immigration minister Gerd Leers, holds the key to his future.

'Algeria will remain committed to the principle of supporting the inalienable right of Sahrawi people to self-determination,' said Kamel Rezzag-Bara, founder member of the Algerian National Committee of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People (CNASPS). 'Algeria will continue to supporting the fundamental right of the Saharawi people to self-determination through free, just and fair referendum,' Mr. Bara told Algeria Press Agency (APS) on the sidelines of the 2nd international conference on the peoples’ right to resistance: case of the Saharawi .

This month’s newsletter contains news of how, for the first time, an Israeli court has ordered the Government of Israel to grant asylum. Also in the issue are articles on resettlement in exchange for local asylum; UNHCR's incentive salary policy; human rights in Rwanda; child custody rights and UNHCR resettlement; resettlement, divorce and visitation rights and a profile of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. The edition also includes opportunities, publications, announcements, news of petitions and resources.

Trusted Society of Human Rights Alliance has said IDPs still living in camps will next week take to the streets to press the government to resettle and compensate them. The lobby’s chairman, Mr Elijah Sikona, alleged that IDPs have been turned into cash cows by some unnamed politicians who have also hatched a plot to buy their votes next year. 'We have close to 800,000 IDPs in camps and some politicians are using them as a tourist attraction to earn cash,' Mr Sikona claimed.

Police authorities at the Leopold Sedar Senghor airport in Dakar have confirmed that they were preventing the secretary-general of the International Federation of Human Rights from entering the country. A statement issued by the rights group quoted the airport police as saying that Mr Paul Nsapu had been detained since Thursday. Since the beginning of the Arab upheavals, civil society and rights groups in Senegal have been facing difficult times with the regime of President Abdoulaye Wade over his bid for a controversial third mandate. Several rights activists have been beaten up, arrested and briefly detained during a string of public demonstrations that left scores injured and public and private property destroyed.

A Kenyan air strike on a camp packed with displaced women and children killed at least three and wounded scores in southern Somalia, witnesses and an aid group said. The Kenyan army denied killing civilians and said that its strike on Sunday had taken out 10 fighters from the Islamist group Shebab, the main target of its two-week-old military operation in Somalia. Medecins Sans Frontieres said at least three were killed in the air raid on the camp with some 9,000 internally-displaced people and witnesses spoke of up to five victims following a strike residents said was conducted by a Kenyan warplane on the city of Jilib.

Kenya has received the support of Rwanda and South Africa for its action in Somalia during separate meetings here between President Mwai Kibaki and Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. The three leaders, who met in Perth, were in the capital of Western Australia to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) held from Friday to Sunday. President Kibaki briefed his two fellow African leaders on the security situation in war-torn Somalia. President Kibaki also appraised the two leaders on the joint military operation that Kenya and the Transition Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia were undertaking to neutralize the insurgents of the Al-Shaabab militia inside Somalia.

In an extraordinary move, President Michael Sata has apologised to the government of Angola for what he said was Zambia's 'treachery' through its support of the rebel Unita movement of Dr Jonas Savimbi during the Angolan civil war. The apology came as Sata received the credentials of the new Angolan ambassador last week and was the first time Zambia had admitted to its part in the Angolan civil war. Subsequently, Sata sent Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, to deliver the apology in Luanda.

The White House has confirmed that the US military has unmanned drone aircraft in Ethiopia but says no strike missions are being launched from the east African country. The White House confirmed the drone flights out of an airfield in the city of Arba Minch after the Washington Post newspaper first reported the operation. The Post, citing unnamed officials, reported that the MQ-9 Reaper drones flying out of Arba Minch were armed, but the US government on Friday denied that they were.

Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has been to Cairo’s notorious C28 military prosecution headquarters to face charges of incitement to violence in the violent 9 October Maspero clashes between Coptic-Christian protesters and military police. Abdel Fattah, who rejects the notion of civilians being tried by military courts, has refused to be interrogated by military prosecutors as a matter of principle. He has also vociferously criticised the idea that the military prosecution should investigate the Maspero clashes, in which military police were directly involved.

Reporters Without Borders says it fails to understand a decision by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to urge countries that have given asylum to Rwandan refugees to withdraw their refugee status by the middle of next year on the grounds that political life in Rwanda is back to normal. 'What normalization is UNCHR talking about?' Reporters Without Borders asked. 'President Paul Kagame was reelected with 93 per cent of the vote in 2010 in an election in which his main opponents could not take part. One is in prison and another is in exile and escaped an assassination attempt. The Rwandan authorities do not tolerate criticism. The independent press is harassed.'