Thank you to Nilesh. He is/was from Jinja. At the expulsion he first ended up in Geneva. He went and saw Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan at the UNHCR and with an assist from our own Perviz Mitha (Mbale) ended up at the famous (for the 1956 Hungarian refugee intake and before that for being built by the Nazis; it still exists and houses Afghan refugees, among others) Traiskerchen camp in Austria. It was L@1stSight (you know about instant love?!) for him with Austria. Austria had offered to take in >100 of our people. Some 70 or so availed of the offer. He’s proudly Austrian now and has contributed a lovely piece for the book below, being a writer.
I have another story of the Traiskerchen camp from Vinod Kataria who went to Sweden. Another camp was at Naples. I have stories there from Razia Ratansi (Canada), Janak Thanki (Norway)- and indirectly of the African Ismaili Pyaralli Mumin (Canada). Prince: What are you doing here? Pyaralli: I am Ismaili. Four months later Prince came to Vancouver and Pyaralli was one of the people who came forward to greet him. I have a picture collected by Sultan Baloo from relatives. Full page. At this time (1972) the HCR was co-ordinating the UN’s humanitarian effort for 10 (ten) million East Pakistan refugees, 0.5 million South Suan displaced people and suddenly 48,000 Rwanda displaced – and yet how much attention the HCR gave to the remaining 4000 Uganda Asians of “undetermined nationality”!
All this is in the book I have been writing 12/7/3.11 years now. Luckily for all the “delay” (but see below in my signature) the book will be available by the time the 50th (independence)/40th (expulsion) anniversary reunion happens, in October 2012. The reunion will of course be an occasion to give thanks to Trudeau, HH Aga Khan, Edward Heath, UNHCR, India/Pakistan and 22 other countries that accepted us. And HE Museveni and Uganda for having us back. My book records all that.
Vali Jamal, BA Cambridge, PhD Stanford, ILO economist 1976-2001. Kampala, Uganda. Uganda Asians: Then and Now, Here and There, We Contributed, We Contribute (1,001 pp; $49.99), forthcoming Oct 2012 at the 40th Expulsion Anniversary Reunion, Munyonyo-by-Lake-Victoria. Sure the book took long – because it’s long and it’s long because it’d to be all-inclusive. For people with SAS, you just leave it on the coffee table and look at it now again. visit http://www.vivaeastafrica.blogspot.com. No poverty equals ignorance, no support is greater than advice – Amir al Mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful) Ali ibn Abu Talib, 1st Shia Imam.
Ismailimail 