Africans who have lived in Ukraine say they have been blocked for days moving to neighboring European Union countries, huddled in the cold without food or shelter, detained by Ukrainian authorities who pushed them to the end of the long queues and even defeated them while passing the Ukrainians.
At least 660,000 people have fled Ukraine in the five days since the Russian invasion began, the UNHCR said. Most are Ukrainians, but some are student or migrant workers from Africa, Asia and other regions who are also desperate to flee.
Chineye Mbagwu, a 24-year-old Nigerian doctor who lived in the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, said she spent more than two days stranded at the Poland-Ukraine border in Medica because security guards allowed Ukrainians to cross but blocked foreigners.
“Ukrainian border guards did not let us in,” she said in a telephone interview in a trembling voice. “They beat people with sticks and tore their jackets,” she added. “They will hit, beat and push them to the end of the queue. It was awful. “
The African Union and Nigerian President Muhammadu Bukhari have condemned the treatment of Africans fleeing Ukraine following social media reports of border guards preventing them from leaving. Africans also say they are banned from boarding trains heading for the border.
“Reports that Africans are discriminated against for unacceptably different attitudes would be shockingly racist and violate international law,” the African Union said.
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko has denied that his country is blocking the departure of foreigners.
“Everything is simple,” he said. “We are the first to release women and children. Foreign men have to wait for women and children to come forward. We will release all foreigners without hindrance “, he added in a written answer to questions. “The same goes for blacks.”
Ms Mbagwu, a Nigerian doctor, managed to reach Warsaw, but said she had crossed the border only by fighting and making her way.
“They would say ‘only women and children can pass,'” she said. “But they missed some Ukrainian men. And every time a black lady tried to pass, they said, “Our women first,” Ms Mbagwu added.
“There was no shelter from the cold. It snowed. There was no food, no water, no place to rest. “I was literally hallucinating from sleep deprivation,” she said.
She said her 21-year-old brother, a medical student, had been stranded at the border since Friday, but managed to reach Poland after four days of trying.
Not all foreigners report harassment by Ukrainian authorities at border crossings.
A Pakistani student and an Afghan citizen who crossed from Ukraine to Poland on Saturday said the only problem was the very long queues. And a group of Vietnamese workers crossed easily into Moldova on Monday.
Mohamed Saadawi, a 23-year-old Moroccan pharmacy student traveling from the Ukrainian city of Odessa to Warsaw, said he had no problems.
“But it took us a long time to find a good border crossing where there wouldn’t be too many people,” he said. “We were treated there in the same way as the Ukrainians.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that there are more than 470,000 foreign nationals in Ukraine, including a large number of foreign students and migrant workers. At least 6,000 of them have arrived in Moldova and Slovakia alone in the past five days, according to IOM, and many more have moved to Poland.
Many foreigners fleeing Ukraine said they were warmly welcomed in neighboring Poland, Moldova, Hungary and Romania. But Mr Bukhari, the president of Nigeria, said there were reports of Polish officials refusing to allow Nigerians.
Piotr Müller, a spokesman for the Polish prime minister, denied this, saying: “Poland allows everyone to come from Ukraine, regardless of their nationality.”
Piotr Bistrianin, head of the Ocalenie Foundation, a Polish charity for refugees, said that so far “the problems have been on the Ukrainian side”.
More than 300,000 people have fled Ukraine to Poland since the Russian invasion began, according to the Polish Interior Ministry. Improvised quarters are being set up all over the country, and Poles are massively helping Ukrainians, transporting them across the border, placing them in their homes, feeding them and dressing them.
On Monday, Poland’s ambassador to the United Nations, Krzysztof Szczerski, said his country welcomed all foreign students studying in Ukraine and invited them to continue their studies in Poland.
In the years before the Russian invasion, Poland had taken a firm stance on migrants trying to enter the country. The army and border guards have pushed asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa back to Belarus. Last week, humanitarian organizations reported that a 26-year-old man from Yemen froze to death on the border.
Some of the foreigners arriving in Poland from Ukraine in the last few days have been exhausted and frozen, according to local humanitarian organizations. Some were taken directly to hospitals for their injuries.
Ahmed Haboubi, a 22-year-old French-Tunisian medical student, said all foreign nationals, including Africans, Israelis, Canadians and Americans, were told to go to a gate at the Medyka checkpoint from Ukraine to Poland, which would only handle four people every few hours, while Ukrainians were allowed to pass freely through another gate.
“The Ukrainian army beat me so much that I could not walk properly,” he said in a telephone interview. “When I finally managed to enter Poland, the Polish authorities took me straight to the hospital,” he added.
“It was absolute chaos. They behaved like animals. There are still thousands of people stranded there. “
He said Poland welcomed him warmly.
Denis Nana Apia Nkansa, a Ghanaian medical student, said he saw the same discrimination when moving from Ukraine to the Romanian city of Siret – one rule for Ukrainians and another for everyone else. Thousands of foreigners, including Zambians, Namibians, Moroccans, Indians and Pakistanis, were directed to one gate, which was largely closed, while another, reserved for Ukrainians, was open and people passed through.
In about three hours, four or five foreigners were allowed to leave while there was a “mass influx” of crossing Ukrainians, he said. “It’s not fair,” he said, “but we realized they had to take care of their people first.”
Nkansa, 31, said he had organized 74 Ghanaian and Nigerian students to get involved and rent a bus to escape together. They reached the border early Saturday morning, he said, but it took them 24 hours to cross.
Emanuel Nwulu, 30, a Nigerian electronics student at Kharkiv National University, said that when he tried to board a train in Ukraine west of the border, Ukrainian officials told him, “Blacks can’t get on the train.” . But Mr. Nwulu and his cousin managed to climb by force.
Taha Daraa, a 25-year-old Moroccan fourth-year dentist at the Dnieper Medical Institute, began his trip around noon on Saturday and crossed the border into Romania in the early hours of Monday morning after sleepless days.
“We were treated so badly. We took buses to the Romanian border. It was very scary, then we had to cross the border until we heard shots, “he said via WhatsApp. “All we did was pray. Our parents also prayed for our safety. This is the only protection we had, “he added.
“I witnessed a lot of racism.”
He said he was in a group with two other Moroccans and many other Africans, and asked a Ukrainian border guard to let them pass. The guard started firing his pistol into the air to scare them, and they retreated.
“I have never been so scared in my life,” Mr Daraa said. “He asked us to come back. It was snowing on us. When the crowd grew, they gave up and let everyone pass. ”
He said Romanians take good care of him and other foreigners and provide them with food and other necessities.
“They gave us everything,” he said.
Abdi Latif Dahir contributed to reports from Nairobi, Kenya, Valery Hopkins of Kyiv, Ukraine, Ben Novak of Zahoni and Beregsurani, Hungary and Aida Alami of Rabat, Morocco.