Ukraine crisis highlights Europe’s history of treating some refugees differently

The journey from war takes days and weeks. And while most people fleeing Ukraine are met with open arms and compassion, Nawa, Kathy and Solomon haven’t always had that experience. Like other people of color seeking safety in neighboring countries, they’ve found themselves repeatedly pushed back, forced out of evacuation trains and threatened with violence when they did try to board.

“They were trying to show that there are levels to this and we were the last,” said Solomon, a 35-year-old locksmith who fled the city of Kharkiv.

Nawa and Kathy, from Zambia and in their 20s, and Solomon, who’s from Kenya, left Ukraine in the days following the Feb. 24 Russian invasion and met in Warsaw, where through social media they found young volunteers offering them a lift by car out of Poland. As they work out where to go next, it’s not clear they’ll find refuge in Europe.

The Russian incursion has sparked the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II, forcing more than 2 million people out of Ukraine in just under two weeks. As of Wednesday, 109,000 of them were non-Ukrainians or third country nationals, including Tunisians, Ghanaians and Lebanese, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In response to the unfolding humanitarian crisis, the EU passed an unprecedented measure allowing Ukrainians to stay for as many as three years in member states. But it’s then up to individual countries to decide if they offer non-Ukrainians who had legal residence in the nation the same protection. The discrimination some have faced highlights how Europe has treated people of different ethnicities escaping conflict.

During the region’s last big refugee crisis in 2015, more than a million people claimed asylum on the continent, the majority of whom were fleeing conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Many were met with hostility in some countries as far-right politicians and media commentators fanned anti-migrant sentiment and fears of Islamic terrorism with hate speech. And every year since then, dozens of people trying to cross the Mediterranean sea from North Africa to Europe in small boats are left to die.

Poland and Hungary, two of the most unwelcoming countries seven years ago, are on the front lines of today’s crisis.

Hungary, which even built a fence to keep people at bay, has been offering a helpful hand as mostly women with children pour across its border with Ukraine. Prime Minister Viktor Orban explained the change last week, telling reporters “we are able to tell the difference between who is a migrant and who is a refugee. Migrants are stopped. Refugees can get all the help.”

Kathy found herself repeatedly knocked back as she tried to board a crowded evacuation train out of Kyiv with Nawa. “We tried to get in with the ladies first, they pushed us aside,” she said, explaining that in the confusion the two friends were separated before being reunited at the next station.

In turn, Nawa was terrified she’d be forced off the train she finally managed to board. “In your head you’re like OK, I’m Black. They have no reason to let me on. We’ve seen this happen time and time again.”

These situations are always messy and in the frantic exodus to flee a war that’s become increasingly brutal, people of all ethnicities have been facing challenges.

Desperate to leave, some non-Ukrainians have forced their way onto trains. And not all of them have been treated badly, but there have been enough incidents for IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino to raise the issue. In a statement last week, he said he was “alarmed about verified credible reports of discrimination, violence and xenophobia against third country nationals.”

Governments took note.

The Ukrainian government has set up an emergency hotline for “African, Asian and other students.” And France said Africans in Ukraine whose degrees have been disrupted by the conflict could apply to continue their studies in a French university.

Countries including India have organized to fly their nationals — many of whom are university students — back home.

Kathy, Nawa and Solomon, like countless others, were at the mercy of the kindness of strangers spurred into action by the reports of mistreatment to make 18-hour road trips across Europe to bring them to safety. They’re now with family.

Community groups saw the “need to help our siblings at the border that are freezing to death, are being neglected,” said Jessica Korp, an organizer at the Tubman Network, which coordinates racial justice groups in Germany.

“The double standard of helping white bodies versus black and brown bodies was extreme,” she said. “So some organizers had to take the executive decision of saying we will not leave them behind.”