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Malaysia was part of the British Empire; therefore, I assume he was using the term “Asian” the way they do in Britain. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean people would be called “Oriental”.

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I want to emphasise that my previous post was just an assumption. You could certainly be right — and in a “Venn-diagram” sense you are certainly right (all Orientals are Asian, not all Asians are Oriental). My post was just a reminder that not every English speaker speaks American English. While “Oriental” has somehow gotten tinged with “political incorrectness” in N. America; they have no such hangups about the term in Britain (and other parts of the Commonwealth).

I think the spokesman was mainly trying to say: “the perps don't look like they came from here”.