Until the outbreak of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Theresia Kabimyama was an engineering student in Odessa, a port city on the shores of the Black Sea. But overnight, the war pushed this young Congolese woman to flee the country where she had chosen to live. A stressful journey by bus – unable to find a seat on a train – took her to Lviv, the big western city, 800 kilometers away, then to the border with Poland, where she was finally able to enter on Sunday February 27.
“It was a nightmare, frankly, the police were not friendly at all with foreigners, especially black people; it insulted us with all the names, it pointed the guns at us, it jostled us”she reports on the phone.
While many Africans, mostly students, are trying like hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to join neighboring countries, accusations of racist behavior at the borders have multiplied in recent days. Videos shared on social media under the hashtag #AfricansinUkraine show scenes of high tension and Africans prevented from boarding trains leaving the country.
Hervé Offou, an Ivorian medical student in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine, has just had the bitter experience of this. In Lviv where he had just arrived, when he wanted to take the train with other foreigners, a policeman got angry: “Get the monkeys out of here”, exclaimed the agent, according to the account of the student who claims to have almost come to blows. He finally decided to walk nearly 40 km on Monday morning to reach the border with Poland, in the company of several compatriots.
“Shocking and racist”
“There too foreigners are put aside. No one comes near us, it’s difficult ”, relates Davy, an Ivorian friend of Hervé. Kader Niekiema, a 28-year-old student from Burkina Faso at Lviv University, experienced the same situation, this time on the border with Hungary. “There were two lines, one for Europeans, the other for Africans, there was panic, the Ukrainian border guards insulted us and pushed us back, it almost got out of hand”says the young man by telephone.
Faced with the proliferation of this type of testimony, the African Union (AU) issued a statement on Monday in the form of a warning. Apply a “unacceptable different treatment” to Africans would be “shocking and racist” and “would violate international law”underlined the Senegalese head of state Macky Sall, current president of the institution, and the president of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat.
“It is essential that everyone is treated with dignity and without favouritism”had already claimed the day before Garba Shehu, a spokesperson for the Nigerian presidency, reporting that“a group of Nigerian students who were repeatedly refused entry to Poland came to realize that they had no choice but to cross Ukraine again to try to get out of the country through Hungary. With some 4,000 nationals in Ukraine, Nigerians make up one of the largest contingents of African students in the country. According to the latest available statistics from Unesco, nearly 13,000 students from Africa – including the Maghreb – were registered in Ukraine in 2019.
In South Africa too, the authorities have raised their voices. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims to have received testimonies and videos showing South Africans and more generally Africans placed in separate lines from Ukrainians and Europeans at border posts. “They were pushed, shoved and sometimes pointed at as Ukrainian soldiers told them that priority was given to Ukrainian and European women and children”explains the spokesman of the ministry, Clayson Monyela.
“Chaos” sparked by the outbreak of war
Present on the spot, the South African ambassador to Ukraine, Andre Groenewald, contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protest. “If this is how Africans should be treated, we will remember it after the conflict”denounces Mr. Monyela who adds that “the situation has improved slightly” since the South African protests.
These accusations of racism were rejected in particular by the Polish ambassador to Nigeria, Joanna Tarnawska. “Everyone gets equal treatment”she told local media, saying invalid identity documents are accepted to cross the border and that Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted.
Provisions confirmed by the Ambassador of Senegal for Poland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic, Papa Diop. This reports that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited a group of African ambassadors on February 15, in anticipation of the outbreak of hostilities. “During this crisis meeting, the Polish authorities informed us that in the event of a conflict, they would not require European visas and health passes from non-European nationals”he explains.
According to him, the frictions of the last days are the result of a “misunderstanding between Polish and Ukrainian border guards” and you « chaos » caused by the outbreak of war. “It’s hard for everyone in this context. Our group of African ambassadors wrote to the Polish Foreign Ministry to ask if any discriminatory instructions had been given. We were told no and we were confirmed with the arrangements made at the February 15 meeting.”he insists.
“Women and children first”
On the Polish side, The world was able to see that dozens of African students had managed to cross the border, despite complications for those who did not have a residence permit in Ukraine. Some Ukrainian refugees also complain that “foreign men like African students” want to pass at all costs “while it must be women and children first”.
While Ukraine has sounded the general mobilization, requisitioning all men aged 18 to 60, the Ukrainians who flee to neighboring countries are mainly women and minors. “But the Ukrainian authorities also block African women”deplores the Ivorian Gildas Bahi, responsible for organizing the regrouping of students from his country with a view to their evacuation.
However, not all testimonials tell the same story. Merouane, an Algerian computer engineering student at Dnipro, embarked with three other Algerians and a Ukrainian on a 900 kilometer journey in the early hours of the Russian invasion. “I have not observed any discrimination linked to the passport and it is rare at the borders”, he reports. After twenty-four hours on the road and several hours of waiting at the border, the group was welcomed by a Polish organization which offered them “a room, food and even a bag of spare clothes for those who hadn’t taken anything”he says, relieved.