topic: | Racism |
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located: | Ukraine, India, Poland |
editor: | Tish Sanghera |
As the fighting in Ukraine has intensified in recent days, thousands of people have fled westwards from the capital Kyiv and its neighbouring cities, desperate to avoid the rapidly worsening conflict with Russia.
However, upon reaching the border, Indian students have reported that Ukrainian military and police are pushing, beating and firing shots into the air in order to prevent groups of foreign citizens from leaving Ukraine and are prioritising the evacuation of Ukrainians. Angel, a medical student from the southern Indian state of Kerala, shared a video from the Sheyni Ukraine-Poland border crossing, claiming that Ukrainian officials were also ramming cars and vans into crowds of students intentionally. “The students fall down, they get up and then again cars are rammed into them,” said Angel.
Panic has gripped Ukraine as Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin announced a full-scale ‘military operation’, claiming that the country had been waging a ‘genocide’ against the Russian-speaking Donbas region. The global community has united in outrage against Putin’s actions and his denial of sovereignty to the Ukrainian people. Last year, Putin claimed in an essay that Ukraine was an inherent part of Russia and essentially should not exist as a separate nation. Western countries have responded with increasingly severe economic sanctions, but Putin’s latest move to ready nuclear weapons has raised serious alarms and questions over what more can be done.
As the world looks on in horror and sympathy for Ukraine, there have also been concerns over racist treatment towards non-Ukrainians equally affected by the conflict. Along with students like Angel, there have been reports of foreign citizens, particularly from Africa, being barred from trains leaving Ukraine for European destinations and facing harassment. Similarly a Moroccan TikTok user posted a video of a group of “Morrocans, Arabs and Blacks” herded together and prevented from leaving the Ukrainian side of the border.
Commentators have noted that race is playing an undeniable role in the treatment of those fleeing Ukraine. Not only are white and European people receiving better treatment from border officials, international media is also using racist tropes to fuel the idea that the displacement of white victims of war is somehow more shocking and terrible than for people of colour.
A CBS correspondent reporting from Kyiv, Charlie D’Agata, said “this isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades.” He added, “this is a relatively civilised, relatively European - I have to choose those words carefully, too - city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” Though D’Agata later apologised for his comments, his sentiments have been mirrored by reporters at NBC News, France’s BFMTV, Al Jazeera English and more. Ukraine’s former Deputy Prosecutor-General also made these shockingly white supremacist remarks on the BBC, ironically at a time when he was reaching out for global condmenation of Putin’s regime: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed,” he said.
This war is reminding us who the world sees as a ‘good refugee’ - those who are not from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or any other non-white country. Though every refugee leaves behind their homes, belongings and lives in a bid for safety, it appears the same level of sympathy is not owed to all.
Photo by Dovile Ramoskaite