Ben Heller Week 7- Approach to Speaking About Ukrainian Refugees and Racism

 Ben Heller 

March 8, 2022

Recently, there have been many reported instances of differing treatment of Ukrainian refugees when compared to refugees from Africa and Asia. This comes as hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled from Ukraine into Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania. The Bulgarian Prime Minister, for one, said “These people are intelligent. They are educated people.... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists. In other words, there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees.” A correspondent of CBS also apologized for saying that this isn’t “‘like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European’ city” on air. Additionally, European leaders who had once been closed to letting in more refugees, citing issues with maintaining infrastructure, have now agreed to take in Ukrainian refugees. 

There have also been reports of racism and islamophobia among people fleeing Ukraine. There are many non-Ukrainian citizens from Africa and Asia who have been discriminated against when attempting to leave Ukraine. Many get pushed off of trains and get stopped at the border, as non-European citizens require visas to cross borders in Europe. This has left many people trapped in Ukraine, sparking tensions between the country and countries such as Nigeria and Lebanon. A Syrian refugee and journalist who now lives in Spain is shocked at the way that Ukrainians are being treated as compared to how Syrian refugees were treated under the same circumstances. Both peoples were under constant Russian attacks, yet European leaders were hesitant to open doors to these people, the same leaders who are now all too happy to let in Ukrainian refugees. It should be noted that it is a good thing that Ukrainians are getting the help they deserve, though it begs the question- why aren’t other, non-European, refugees treated the same?


https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/europe-racism-ukraine-refugees-1.6367932


Comments

  1. AnonymousMar 8, 2022, 10:37:00 PM

    I believe in helping anyone who is in need, so to see people not offering help just because of biases is quite upsetting. Hopefully everyone can improve on helping others.

    ReplyDelete

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