The other Asian refugees in the 1970s : Australian responses to the Bangladeshi refugee crisis in 1971

[Excerpt] If I was to ask you to imagine Asian refugees in the 1970s, what images would spring to mind? I suspect you would think of Vietnamese refugees, either on a boat drifting in the South China Sea or perhaps in an overcrowded camp in Malaysia. These are iconic images of Asian refugees in the 1970s and with little wonder. The Vietnamese exodus was dramatic, sudden and was the result of Western, primarily American, military intervention in the region. Furthermore, with the resettlement of over 1.4 million Indochinese (Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian) refugees throughout Western countries from April 1975 to 1991, these South-East Asian migrants have had a visible impact on cities across North America, Western Europe and Australia.3 If not the Vietnamese refugees, then perhaps you thought of Ugandan Asians, the 27,200 ethnic Gujaratis who were forcibly expelled by Ugandan President Idi Amin as part of his government’s ‘Africanisation’ strategy in 1972–73.