As hundreds of thousands fled Ukraine, some colored immigrants and students fleeing Russian attacks said they remained unknown at the border.
Adeyemo Abimbole, a Nigerian student studying in Ukraine, told ABC News on Sunday that he and a group of African students had been waiting for a train to cross Poland for nearly three days, but were told to wait.
“Ukrainians are given priority, which is given to children and women,” Abimbole said.
“Our lives also matter,” he added. It is unclear whether Abimbole and his friends reached Poland.
Women, children and the elderly are given priority at border crossings, while many Ukrainian men of combat age remain after Ukraine began recruiting reservists between the ages of 18 and 60 to fight Russian attacks.
Adeyemo Abimbole, a Nigerian student in Ukraine, told ABC News that he and his friends have been waiting for a train to Poland for days.
Andrew Gedes, a professor of migration research and director of the Center for Migration Policy, told ABC News that prioritizing the safety of women, children and the elderly is “quite standard” during a humanitarian crisis because they are “seen as more -vulnerable.
But Gedes added that this has made some third-country nationals living in Ukraine, including men from Africa and Asia, who will not join the Ukrainian army, feel “trapped in the situation.”
According to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in 2019 in Ukraine studied about 80,000 foreign students from 158 countries, most of whom – about 23% – come from India, followed by Morocco, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Nigeria.
Discrimination reports
ABC News witnessed trains heading to Poland for non-Ukrainian men, but some non-white refugees detained at various border crossings said they believed they had been discriminated against on the basis of their race.
Pyra Diantouadi, a Congolese immigrant living in Dnipro, Ukraine, spoke to ABC News on Tuesday after arriving in Korzcowa, Poland.
He said that while waiting to board the train, he was told that only women and children were allowed, but then observed how some Ukrainian men were allowed to board.
“The police in Ukraine were taking some men, and we thought, ‘How is that possible?’ You just said women and children, so now you take Ukrainians; white people. Why? Aren’t we people like them? Diantouadi said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded to reports of discrimination in a tweet on Tuesday, saying “the Ukrainian government is spared no effort to solve the problem.”
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected Ukrainians and non-citizens in many devastating ways. “Africans seeking evacuation are our friends and must have equal opportunities to return safely to their home countries,” he tweeted.
Gedes said non-white refugees fleeing Ukraine, especially men, “are falling through the cracks for protection.”
“They really do not fit into the dominant framework of young Ukrainian men fighting and vulnerable groups evacuating … they have almost become less visible in the context of this security crisis,” he said.
Corine Skye, a black British medical student living in Ukraine, told ABC News on Wednesday that she and her family had been in a queue for 40 hours at the Romanian border and were aggressive when they reached the front line. facing some Ukrainians who did not want to enter.
Skye said that when she and her husband got out of the car to seek help from the Ukrainian army, they were asked to join a line for travelers on foot, which included only “people of color”.
“There was obvious segregation,” she said.
“They give priority to the Ukrainian people who are leaving Ukraine,” she added. We, the students who have come from different countries to get an education for a better life for our families and friends, we are the least of their worries.
Skye and her family arrived in Romania on Tuesday.
Two African students from Esvatini, Swaziland, console each other after crossing the Romanian-Ukrainian border crossing in Siret, northern Romania, on February 27, 2022. Romanian authorities say about 25,000 people have entered Romania since the beginning. of the conflict in Ukraine.
Amid reports of discrimination, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi confirmed at a news conference on Tuesday that “there are cases” of differentiation of border treatment based on race, but said he was confident that “this is not the case”. are public policies. “
“We will continue to intervene, as we have done several times, to try to ensure that everyone is received in the same way,” he said, urging all nations to welcome those fleeing Ukraine without discrimination.
Chaos and traffic jams
The mass exodus of more than 1 million refugees, according to UNHCR data released on Wednesday, has led to chaos and congestion at border crossings, especially in Poland, which has taken in more than 453,000 refugees from Ukraine.
People fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine are waiting to board a bus heading to a refugee center set up in Przemyśl, Medica, Poland, on March 1, 2022.
Likabiso Lekoatza, a medical student from Lesotho who studies in Dnipro, Ukraine, spoke to ABC News after fleeing Ukraine via Slovakia while traveling by car through the Czech Republic, hoping to reach Germany, where he has friends.
“It was not difficult to move to Slovakia,” she said.
“There were no problems,” she added. “They just took my passport and let me go very easily.
Lekoatsa, who was due to graduate in 2024, said she decided to flee Slovakia because her friend, also a Lesotho medical student studying in Ukraine, told her she was detained in Poland and was waiting for the station for at least three days.
“She was trying to go to Poland [Ukrainian officials] they said they would not let her go until all the Ukrainians were gone, “Lekoatza added, adding that she had not been able to contact her friend to find out if she had succeeded.
Dozens of self-identified right-wing nationalists stormed downtown Przemysl, Poland, on Tuesday, harassing refugees who looked like colored people, witnesses to the incident told ABC News.
Julian Würzer, a reporter for the German-based Berliner Morgenpost, told ABC News that the extremists were shouting aggressively at the refugees to leave the country and allegedly attacked them during the incident.
A Nigerian student cries after police refused to allow him to board a train to Poland, six days after he was removed, at Lviv-Holovnyi Railway Station in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday, February 28, 2022.
Grandi said he met with Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau on Wednesday, who “reaffirmed Poland’s commitment to continue accepting all fugitives without distinction”.
Asked about Grandi’s comments, Gedes said “field practices may not reflect central government policies”.
“It can be quite a distance between the capital, the ministry and the people who actually run border control policy,” he added.
Refugees arriving from Ukraine embrace at the border crossing in Medica, eastern Poland on March 1, 2022.
According to UNHCR, the number of Ukrainians fleeing their country has so far risen to 836,000, a mass exodus believed to be the largest number of people displaced in the shortest period since World War II. war.
Addressing the UN General Assembly on Monday, Grandi called on European nations not to discriminate in accepting refugees from Ukraine.
“I encourage governments to continue to maintain access to the territory for all refugees, of course Ukrainians, but also third-country nationals living in Ukraine, people there to work and study. And in some cases, people who are in Ukraine as refugees and all of whom are now similarly forced to flee the violence, “he said. “At this critical time, there can be no discrimination against any person or group.”
Robert Zepeda of ABC News, Marcus Moore, Matt Gutmann, Chiara Alfonseca and Abby Cruz contributed to this report.