Ugandan Asians at Plasterdown Camp

The plight of refugees expelled from Uganda is highlighted.

TV reporter Lawrie Quayle reports from Plasterdown Resettlement Camp at Okehampton in Devon on the arrival of Asians from Uganda. In August 1972 the then President of Uganda and brutal dictator Idi Amin gave Ugandan Asians ninety days to leave the country. Amin supported ethnic Ugandans and felt threatened by an educated Asian elite many of whom were bankers, civil servants, factory and land owners.

The Resettlement Board aimed to help the displaced population find work and housing and an integration programme was set up. An estimated 27,000 Ugandan Asians were resettled in the UK with some returning to Africa many years later. Others went to host countries including Canada, America, India and some European countries. The military training camp of prefabricated tunnel-shaped Nissen huts was built at Plasterdown at the outbreak of the Second World War and served as a hospital, a prison and a refugee camp. In 1976 the camp was demolished. The 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and 1967 protocol extension to non-European refugees seek to protect the rights of displaced populations.