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Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill argues that Israel is feigning ignorance if it thinks Hamas will surrender.

As President Donald Trump intensifies his controversial efforts to remove immigrants from the nation, Uganda is the latest of several nations to reach a deportation agreement with the US.

In a statement on Thursday, Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Kampala had agreed for Washington to send over third-country nationals who face deportation from the US, but are unwilling to return to their home countries. According to the ministry, the agreement was reached under a number of conditions.

Trump’s contentious plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants have been condemned by rights organizations and law experts. Those already deported include convicted criminals and “uniquely barbaric monsters”, according to the White House.

Similar agreements have been made between African nations, such as Eswatini, which was formerly known as Swaziland, reportedly in exchange for lower tariffs. According to Melusi Simelane of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), the US’s actions constitute exploitative behavior and amount to “dumping ground” for the continent, adding that Washington was particularly focused on developing nations with weak human rights protection.

Here’s what you need to know about the Uganda deal and what countries might be getting in return for hosting US deportees:

What ratified in Uganda?

The permanent secretary of Uganda’s foreign ministry, Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, claimed in a statement posted on X on Thursday that the nation had a “temporary arrangement” with the US. He did not state the timelines for when the deportations would begin or end.

According to the statement, there are caveats about the people who would be transferred, such as the statement that Uganda “prefers” that Africans be transferred as part of the deal.

The statement continued, “The two parties are putting together the detailed modalities for the implementation of the agreement.”

A US State Department statement confirmed that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had held discussions over the phone regarding “migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties”.

After weeks of speculation in the local Ugandan media regarding whether the country would accept US deportees, the deal was announced.

Henry Okello Oryem, the foreign affairs minister in Uganda, refuted the media reports on Wednesday, claiming the country lacks the facilities to house deportees.

Speaking to The Associated Press news agency, Oryem said Uganda was discussing issues of “visas, tariffs, sanctions and related issues” with the US, but not of migration.

“We’re talking about cartels,” said one analyst. How can we incorporate them into Uganda’s local communities? he told the AP.

Uganda’s narrative had changed the day afterward.

What might Uganda gain from this?

What might Uganda be receiving in return was not disclosed in the Foreign Ministry’s statement on Thursday.

Other nations, including Eswatini, reportedly offer deportees lower tariffs.

Uganda has been hit with 15 percent tariffs on goods entering the US, as part of Trump’s reciprocal tariff wars. Early in August, senior government officials in Uganda announced that Kampala would start negotiations for a better deal and that the tariffs would impede exports, particularly in the agricultural sector.

One of Uganda’s most important exports to the US is coffee, vanilla, cocoa, and petroleum products. Kampala is particularly keen on boosting coffee exports to the US and competing with bigger suppliers like Colombia. On the other hand, the US pays an 18% tariff on imported goods to Uganda, which exports machinery, such as aircraft parts.

The US and Uganda have historically forged friendly relations, with US aid arriving in Kampala on a regular basis. However, after Uganda passed an anti-homosexuality bill into law in 2023, relations turned sour, and the US accused Uganda of “human rights violations”. For same-sex relationships, punishment under the law, including life sentences, is imposed.

After that, Washington halted HIV-related aid and imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan government officials who “were complicit in undermining the democratic process.” The US also banned Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade programme that helped African countries trade tariff-free with the US, but that Trump’s tariffs have effectively killed.

Uganda was also prohibited from receiving two-year loans by the World Bank, but this restriction was lifted in June.

Rights activists claim that the deportees’ accord could lead to a more favorable US administration position toward Uganda, but at the expense of those who have been deported.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law”, human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo told the AP. According to him, such a system leaves deportees without clear definition of their legal status as refugees or prisoners.

Because of the desire for Uganda to appear in the good books of the United States, Opiyo said, “We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency in this case.” “That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me, how is that different from human trafficking”?

Are refugees already a thing in Uganda?

Yes, Uganda hosts the most refugees in Africa. It already hosts some 1.7 million refugees, largely from neighbouring South Sudan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are all dealing with armed conflict and unrest.

In the past, the country has been praised for having a “progressive refugee policy” and “maintaining an open-door approach to asylum.”

Opposition activists are, however, raising concerns about the government’s poor human rights record. Uganda has been ruled by Museveni since 1986, with his party winning contested elections in landslides. Of course, opposition figures and journalists are frequently the targets of arrests. Some people report being tortured while they are being held.

Speaking to the AP, opposition lawmaker Muwada Nkunyingi said the US deal could give Museveni’s government further Western legitimacy ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2026.

According to Nkunyingi, the agreement “clears their image now that we are about to hold elections in 2026.” He urged the US to take into account what he termed Uganda’s human rights problems.

What other nations has the US sent people there?

Similar agreements have been reached with the US by Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan.

Eswatini, in July, accepted five unnamed men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen.

They were described as “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” according to Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department for Homeland Security. She added that they were sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for crimes ranging from child rape to murder. The men are presently held in detention facilities and will be sent back to their countries, according to officials who did not state a timeline.

The Eswatini government is accused of participating in the deal in exchange for US tariff cuts. The tiny nation, which pays US exports of clothing, fruits, nuts, and raw sugar, received a 10% tariff.

“No country should have to be engaged in the violation of international human rights laws, including breaching its domestic laws, to please the Global North in the name of trade”, Simulane of SALC, who is leading an ongoing court case challenging the Eswatini government’s decision, told Al Jazeera. According to him, the action was in contravention of the nation’s constitution, which requires that parliament approves international agreements.

The agreement should be made public for the public to see if it is in line with our national interest, Simulane said, “at the core.” “We further want the agreement declared unconstitutional because it lacked parliamentary approval”.

South Africa, which borders Eswatini on three sides, summoned the smaller nation’s diplomats earlier in August to raise security concerns.

In July, the US sent eight “barbaric” criminals to South Sudan. The DHS listed them as being from Cuba, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and South Sudan. According to the DHS, they were found guilty of first-degree murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and sexual assault.

In the US, the men were initially directed to Djibouti for months while a legal challenge was pending. However, in late June, the US Supreme Court approved the move to South Sudan.

Rwanda has also stated that it will deport 250 Americans at an unnamed time. The deportees will enjoy “workforce training, health care, and accommodations,” says government spokesman Yolande Makolo. The country previously struck a controversial migrant deal for a fee with the United Kingdom. However, that agreement was broken when the UK’s new Labour government was elected in 2024.

El Salvador has accepted 300 migrants, primarily from Venezuela, for a $6 million fee.

Costa Rica accepted 200 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, China, Ghana, India and Vietnam. By June, 28 people had already been detained, compared to the majority of those who had been repatriated. What did the US offer in return remain a mystery.

In a busy Lagos food market, a customer points at an enamel bowl filled with rice. “How much for a derica?” she asks.

Salesman Christopher Onyekwere scoops grains into a tin can and holds it up, listing the prices for local and imported rice.

Heavy use has worn the text off the tin can that once contained 400 grammes of tomato paste. The branding on most of the tin cans used to measure rice, melon seeds and black-eyed beans at Lagos’s Idi Alba market is equally illegible.

Derica is a unit of measurement found in markets all over Lagos, as well as in some cities in the south, like Port Harcourt, and the east, like Enugu. But where does the name come from? Twenty-one-year-old Onyekwere shrugs. “I have no idea.”

An older trader on the next street responds to the question with a smile.

“How old was the salesman you spoke to? You must have asked the wrong person. Too young to remember how popular De Rica tomato paste was,” says 49-year-old Henry Njoku.

Ubiquitous tin can

When Njoku moved west from Imo State to Lagos as a teenager in the 1980s to set up his food shop, vendors were already using derica as a measurement.

But the De Rica brand was once so widespread in southern Nigeria, he says, that it was used simply to mean tomato paste, whatever the brand.

Nigerian food writer Yemisi Aribisala remembers her grandparents using it when she was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. “De Rica was everywhere. At that time, everyone considered it the best tinned tomato,” she says.

As the tin cans were so ubiquitous, food vendors started to use the empty cans to measure food, each scoop being a “derica”. “We recycle so much, it makes sense those tins became a unit of measurement,” Aribisala adds.

There are also other units of measurement based on well-known products. Blue Band margarine tubs are used to measure a “butter”, while the smaller “cigarette cup” is measured by tins that once contained 50 cigarettes.

In Longthroat Memoirs, her 2017 collection of essays on Nigerian cuisine, Aribisala laments the challenges of trying to translate cigarette cups and dericas into the ounces and pounds of a cookbook. But she understands why the market vendors prefer to use them: “Good scales are expensive, and empty tins are free.”

Any can will do

Although the name “derica” is used, market vendors these days use cans with different brand names to measure this unit, says Njoku. At his Idi Araba stall, he points at the tins resting on the mounds of dry goods. “None of them are De Rica. We don’t find De Rica tins at this market any more.”

In 2017, the Nigerian federal government banned the import of tomato products to stimulate local tomato production. Because of the high cost of setting up a tin production line, which would raise consumer prices, locally produced paste, including De Rica, started mostly being sold in plastic packets, leading to the disappearance of the iconic cans.

“Goment don ban am [The government banned it],” explains Agatha Okonkwo in Pidgin.

De Rica was once the leading tomato paste brand, according to Okonkwo, the owner of AO Stores at the wholesale Mushin market, where all kinds of products, from Maggi cubes to dried crayfish, are sold.

“There was a time Nigerians said De Rica when they meant tomato paste,” she says. She’d rather not mention her age, but she remembers her mother cooking stew with De Rica in the 1960s. “Everybody used it. That time has passed.”

De Rica has its origins in a tomato processing factory that began operating in 1912 with 20 workers in the countryside of northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. It is unclear when the brand first made its way to Nigeria, but Nigerian consumers, like Okonkwo, trace their first memories of it as far back as the 1960s.

The saleswoman shows row after row of cardboard boxes filled with 60gm sachets containing different brands of tomato paste. Only one carton holds De Rica. The others are mostly Sonia – “the cheapest” – and Gino – “the most popular” and similar in price to De Rica. Even before the government ban, De Rica was no longer the leading brand. “Competition is too much,” she explains.

“This is the only way you’ll find De Rica tomato paste today,” says Okonkwo, who has not seen the canned product for more than five years.

Brand loyalty

Today, some still swear by De Rica.

Victor Moses, a 31-year-old sous chef in Abuja’s upscale Wells Carlton Hotel, is famous for his smoky jollof rice. His secret for preparing the West African dish is letting the rice burn a bit before adding water. The other is using De Rica to bring out the smoky flavour of his dish, giving it “a rich taste like mustard gets”, he says. “And it also gives the rice a good red colour.”

Now the brand’s popularity has catapulted back to Europe, as Nigerians in the diaspora seek it out. “Nigerians are brand conscious,” explains Tim Szejnoga, an account manager for Dutch import company Unidex. “They will remain loyal to one brand their entire lives.”

The 400gm tin cans may no longer be available in Nigeria, but they live on in Lagos’s markets every time a seller measures out a derica.

This article is part of “Ordinary items, extraordinary stories”, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items. 

Read more from the series:

How the inventor of the bouncy castle saved lives

How a popular Peruvian soft drink went ‘toe-to-toe’ with Coca-Cola

How a drowning victim became a lifesaving icon

New Delhi, India – The Indian government tabled a new bill earlier this week in parliament under which a prime minister, state chief minister or other federal or state minister can be removed from office if they are facing criminal investigations – even before they are convicted.

The draft law proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mandates the automatic removal of elected officials if they are detained for 30 consecutive days on charges carrying a minimum sentence of five years.

Even as Amit Shah, India’s home minister who is widely seen as Modi’s deputy, presented the bill in parliament, members of the opposition ripped apart legislative papers and hurled them at Shah, before the house was suspended amid chaos.

The opposition, strengthened in the 2024 national election in which the BJP lost its majority and was forced to turn to smaller allies to stay in power, has slammed the bill as an example of “undemocratic” weaponising of laws against dissent.

Meanwhile, the Indian government says the proposed law will rein in corrupt and criminal public representatives.

So, is the proposed law authoritarian or democratic? What’s behind the opposition’s allegations against the Modi government? Or, as some experts argue, is it all a trap?

What’s the bill proposing?

The Modi government tabled the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025, in parliament on Wednesday.

As per the amendment, an elected leader would automatically lose their post if they are arrested and detained for 30 consecutive days on charges carrying a minimum sentence of five years.

The bill also includes a provision for reappointment, allowing leaders to return to their posts if they secure bail or are acquitted.

The government argues that the measure is a step towards reinforcing accountability and public trust, arguing that those facing serious criminal charges should not continue in constitutional office.

The amendment has been referred to a joint parliamentary committee – a panel consisting of legislators from both the government and opposition parties – for its deliberations, following opposition protests.

What’s the opposition saying?

Opposition leaders have alleged that the proposed amendment could be misused by the Modi government against critics and political rivals.

That risk, they say, is especially high since law enforcement agencies that come under the federal government only need to arrest and press serious charges against opposition members, and keep them in custody for 30 days – without worrying about actually proving those charges in a court of law.

Manish Tewari, MP from the opposition Congress party, said that “the bill is against the principle of presumption of innocence” until proven guilty.

Asaduddin Owaisi, another opposition MP from Hyderabad city in southern India, said this law would be used to topple adversarial state governments.

Critics have also pointed to how, under India’s constitution, state governments have the primary responsibility for maintaining law and order. The proposed law, they say, upends that principle.

Applying this law to state leaders undermines India’s federal structure, he said, noting that this weakens the people’s right to choose governments.

“The bill would change the federal contract in fundamental ways, including balance of power between centre and states, giving the centre enormous leverage to sabotage elected governments – and, of course, to the space for oppositional politics,” said Asim Ali, a political observer based in New Delhi.

Are the opposition’s allegations founded?

Since 2014, when Modi came to power in New Delhi, the opposition has alleged that the government has increasingly used agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), tasked with fighting financial crimes, and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier investigative body, to target rival politicians.

In March 2023, opposition parties petitioned in India’s top court against “a clear pattern of using investigative agencies … to target, debilitate and in fact crush the entire political opposition and other vocal citizens”.

The petition noted that since 2014, 95 percent of cases taken up by the CBI and the ED have been against politicians from the opposition. That’s a 60 percentage point and 54 percentage point rise, respectively, from the days of the previous Congress-led government.

In parliament, 46 percent of current members face criminal cases, with 31 percent of them charged with serious crimes like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and crimes against women.

In the run-up to the 2024 general election, investigative agencies had arrested multiple opposition leaders, including Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy, Manish Sisodia. The ED also arrested Hemant Soren, just hours after he resigned as the chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, on accusations of corruption.

In the last 12 years of BJP rule in India, at least 12 sitting opposition ministers have been detained and jailed for more than 30 days  – nine of them from Delhi and the eastern state of West Bengal.

Is this a distraction?

Some political observers and the Modi government’s critics say yes.

A constitutional amendment in India requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the parliament, which the BJP and its allies lack.

Modi’s government currently survives with the support of the BJP’s alliance partners, after it fell short of a majority in the 2024 national election.

In recent weeks, the Modi government has faced mounting opposition criticism over a controversial revision of electoral rolls ahead of a crucial state election, allegations of vote theft, and heat over foreign policy challenges as India battles 50 percent tariffs from the United States under President Donald Trump.

It is against that backdrop that the bill – which Ali, the political observer, described as “authoritarian” yet “symbolic” in nature – is significant, say experts.

“Even if the bill does not become a law, it will anyway force a showdown to make opposition parties vote against the bill,” Ali said, “so that they can use that as ammunition against them in [election] campaigning.”

Since floating the bill, Modi, his government and the BJP have been accusing critics of being sympathetic to criminals in politics.

On Friday, speaking at a rally in election-bound Bihar state, Modi referred to Kejriwal’s refusal for months after his arrest on money laundering charges to quit from the Delhi chief minister’s post.

“Some time ago, we saw how files were being signed from jail and how government orders were given from jail. If leaders have such an attitude, how can we fight corruption?” Modi said.

Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said that while the bill is draconian and could be misused, Modi’s party, for now, thinks it can help them consolidate urban, middle-class votes for the upcoming election in Bihar.