A Cuban couple trying to escape war in Ukraine Just because she didn’t have a Ukrainian passport, she was denied boarding a bus at the Polish border last week, even though the woman miscarried on the way to the border.
The incident was described as “incredibly worrying” by Niki Ignatiou, an employee of Action Aid, an international charity that has been helping refugees cross the border from Ukraine to Medyka in Poland for the past few weeks.
“It was just a couple from Cuba who only spoke Spanish and they were denied boarding because their passport was not Ukrainian. It’s absolutely appalling and devastating to see people of color being treated differently.”Ignatiou complained in statements collected by a British media outlet.
“Furthermore, in this case, the woman was incredibly vulnerable as she shared with our team that she had unfortunately miscarried on the way from Ukraine to Poland,” added the humanitarian adviser.
Niki Ignatiou told that the A Cuban couple had to endure a very difficult journey trying to flee a country at war, and also had to face “additional burdens, challenges and discrimination in their journey”.
“This incident is incredibly worrying: everyone fleeing a conflict situation, regardless of their background, has the same right to safe transit,” the activist concluded.
However, this was assured by the already mentioned representative of the NGO ActionAid After several efforts, they managed to get the Cuban couple – whose identities were not revealed – on a train to Germany, a country where they had relatives.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said more than four million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began on February 24. This is the largest exodus in Europe since World War II.
More than half of those refugees arrived in Poland, a country that is home to around 2.3 million Ukrainians, while around 600,000 are in Romania, where thousands previously passed through neighboring Moldova.
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