These are not the refugees we are used to. ... These people are Europeans. ... These people are intelligent, they are educated people. ... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.
Vladimir Putin’s fury has descended upon Ukraine. According to President Putin, Russia could not feel safe, develop and exist because of Ukraine’s threat. Putin’s goal is demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine.
Russia’s deadly onslaught has precipitated the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. The United Nations estimates that in just one week of fighting, more than 1.4 million people have fled into Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova and Slovakia.
The European Union estimates that more than seven million people could be displaced. The United Nations agency for refugees, UNHCR, estimates that over 4 million Ukrainians will become refugees and millions more will be internally displaced.
The response from other European countries to the refugee crisis has been both heroic and unprecedented; swift and unified. EU member states will grant refugees the right to live and work in the EU for up to three years without the requirement of a visa.
The current show of solidarity has been lauded and the world hopes that it will endure in the coming months and even years as the war rages inside Ukraine. But this magnanimity and show of magnificent solidarity only applies to Ukrainian nationals, not all refugees fleeing Putin’s war.
But not all refugees fleeing death from Ukraine are equal. There is a growing number of revolting accounts of students and migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who have faced violent obstruction and racist treatment trying to flee just to save their own lives.
Accounts of non-Europeans being pulled and pushed down by Ukrainian authorities as they tried to board a train or bus are heart-rending. Border guards at the Polish border have pushed non-Europeans from the queue and given priority to Poles and Ukrainians.
There are accounts of Polish authorities taking aside African students and denying them entry into Poland. Africans and other non-European nationals have had to wait in line, in the cold, for 14 to 50 hours to cross into Poland.
With the recent history of the treatment of Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis as the backdrop, the racist double standards institutionalised in Europe’s response to refugees is thundering.
Nothing captures the essence of deep-seated racism in the treatment of refugees than the Bulgarian Prime Minister’s comments. Speaking with journalists, Kiril Petkov said, “These are not the refugees we are used to. ... These people are Europeans. ... These people are intelligent, they are educated people. ... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”
Similarly, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has described migration as an invasion and migrants as a poison, doubled down when he said one does not have to be a rocket scientist to see the difference between masses from Muslim regions seeking a better life in Europe and helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing war.
Can Europe overcome racial discrimination in the treatment of refugees? This must be a critical moment of reflection for Brussels.
The views expressed are the writer’s
