Greenham Common exhibition tells Ugandan Asian refugees' stories

More than 1,600 refugees lived at the base after arriving in the UK

An exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Ugandan Asian refugees in the UK has opened at one of the bases which welcomed them.

In 1972, RAF Greenham Common became a resettlement centre for those who were ordered to leave Uganda by president Idi Amin after he seized power.

More than 1,600 refugees spent a year living in barrack blocks on the site.

The organisers of Uprooted 50 Years Ago said it would tell the stories of those who stayed at the base.

Large numbers of Asians settled in Uganda while it was still under British rule, but when Amin swept to power, the dictator expelled them all from the country, accusing them of milking the economy.

Many of the 27,000 forced to leave held British passports and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London as refugees.

Pragna Hay (left) arrived at the base at the age of five, while Sally Breach (right) helped there as a Red Cross volunteer

Pragna Hay, one of the exhibition's organisers, arrived at RAF Greenham Common when she was five.

She said she could clearly remember hearing Amin make his edict, in which he told those affected that they had 90 days to leave and could only take a single suitcase and £50.

• Idi Amin: The life of a tyrant

• Ugandan Asians: Life decades on from expulsions

• Ugandan Asians dominate economy after exile

She said the barrack blocks were divided up between individual families and "became like a little private place".

"You wouldn't go into another person's area without permission, because that kind of became their space," she said.

Bharti Dhir said her mother was threatened at gunpoint when she tried to leave

Bharti Dhir, who was adopted by an Asian family, said that when her mother tried to take her to Kampala to catch a flight out of the country, soldiers tried to separate them at gunpoint.

She said she remembered them saying "she's one of us, she's not one of you".

"I clearly didn't look Asian and my mother very bravely and with great courage refused," she said.

Sally Breach helped as a Red Cross volunteer at the base in 1973

Sally Breach helped at the base at the age of 12, as her family lived in nearby Newbury and were involved with the British Red Cross.

She said she remembered seeing people arriving "who had been beaten [and] girls who had been abused".

"It was pretty horrendous," she said.

"At 12, quite honestly, I knew they had been visibly injured, but I didn't have much inkling [of what had happened to them].

"It wasn't until I was older and could think back that I could realise what I was actually seeing."

The exhibition, which features photographs and testimonies of those who stayed at the base as well as films of some who returned to visit Uganda in later years, runs at Greenham Common Control Tower until October.