A16 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022
war in ukraine
BY MAITE FERNÁNDEZ SIMONJessica Orakpo, 23, a medical
student from Nigeria, and her
friend Nataizya Nanyangwe, 24,
an economics student from Zam-
bia, both enrolled at universities
in Ternopil, in western Ukraine,
decided that the time had come,
in the face of Russia’s invasion of
the country, for them to leave.
They piled into a cab bound for
the Polish border, some 136 miles
away, around 8 a.m. on Feb. 26.
After two hours, they hit wall-to-
wall traffic. The cab couldn’t go
any farther.
After the taxi hit the bottle-
neck, Orakpo and her friend de-
cided to continue their journey by
foot. Orakpo said she packed only
some clothes, blankets and her
travel documents.
By the time they drew close to
the Polish border — a day later —
they faced another obstacle, one
that Orakpo says was prompted
by her race.
Several African and South
Asian citizens in Ukraine have
said they’ve seen different treat-
ment of those who are non-White
and non-Ukrainian and trying to
leave the country, a situation that
has been confirmed by the top
U.N. refugee agency and other
official authorities.
Orakpo and Nanyangwe say
they were among those set apart
and denied evacuation from
Ukraine because they are African.
As they walked, Orakpo and
Nanyangwe had taken breaks to
rest by the road, lying on the
blankets. After walking for close
to 12 hours, they made it to a
school’s basketball court-turned-
shelter, where they were able to
rest, thanks to a traffic warden
who offered to drive them there.
“He sees that I’m very tired, and I
was so grateful to him. Till this
day, I’m very grateful to that guy,”
Orakpo said.
The next day, they made it to a
bus stop in the town of Mostyska,
where buses were taking people
to the Polish border. When they
got there, Orakpo told The Wash-
ington Post, officials started al-
lowing only women with children
and pregnant women. The first
bus took off, then the second. Pets
and their owners were being load-
ed onto a third bus, without any
noncitizens being allowed to
board. Orakpo pleaded to be al-
lowed on the bus and was initially
ignored. She speaks a bit of Ukrai-
nian, so she said she was pregnant
so she could be considered.
Another bus came. “We were
this close to entering,” she said.
Orakpo overheard other people in
the station saying in Ukrainian:
“Why are the Blacks entering?”
“It was very devastating,” she
said. Orakpo turned to a Ukraini-
an woman organizing the line and
asked her: “What’s wrong with us
entering the bus? When will you
start loading us?” The woman
looked at her and said: “Only
Ukrainians are going to get on the
bus,” according to Orakpo. “That’s
very bad. What about us?” the
medical student asked. The wom-
an shrugged.
Requests for comment to
Ukraine’s State Border Guard
Service were not immediately re-
turned.
“I don’t know what is happen-
ing on the Ukrainian side of the
border, but we let everyone in
regardless of nationality,” a
spokesperson for the Polish bor-
der guards told France24.
Stories similar to Orakpo’s
have been reported in news me-dia and shared on Twitter and
Instagram as people desperately
try to flee Ukraine.
Barlaney Mufaro Gurure, a
Zimbabwean space engineering
student, said she was pushed by a
border guard who was giving pri-
ority to Ukrainians at the Krak-
ovets border crossing, Al Jazeera
reported. The New York Times
reported that Chineye Mbagwu, a
24-year-old Nigerian doctor,
spent more than two days strand-
ed in the town of Medyka by the
Poland-Ukraine border crossing,
as guards were allowing Ukraini-
ans to cross but not foreigners.
Saakshi Ijantkar, a 22-year old
medical student from India, told
CNN that Indians also faced in-
stances of racism when going
through one of the checkpoints
near the Polish border.
The U.N. high commissioner
for refugees, Filippo Grandi, saidsome people were receiving “dif-
ferent treatments” compared
with others.
“You have seen reports in the
media that there are different
treatments — with Ukrainians
and non-Ukrainians,” Grandi said
at a news conference Tuesday.
“Now, our observations — and we
possibly cannot observe every
single post yet — but our observa-
tions is that these are not state
policies, but there are instances
which it has happened.
“There should be absolutely no
discrimination between Ukraini-
ans and non-Ukrainians, Euro-
peans and non-Europeans. Every-
one is fleeing from the same
risks,” he added.
Moroccan Foreign Minister
Nasser Bourita told The Post that
there were “isolated cases” of Afri-
can citizens being mistreated at
the border. “I don’t think it’ssomething done systematically,”
he said.
The African Union released a
statement condemning the treat-
ment of African citizens at Ukrai-
nian border crossings. “Reports
that Africans are singled out for
unacceptable dissimilar treat-
ment would be shockingly racist
and in breach [of] international
law,” the statement said.
Nigerian Foreign Minister
Geoffrey Onyeama said he was
aware of the incidents and that he
had a call Tuesday with his Ukrai-
nian counterpart, Dmytro Kule-
ba.
“He said that the instructions
they had at the border was that
everybody, everyone, irrespective
of nationality or race, could leave
and that the only ones that
couldn’t leave were [male] Ukrai-
nians from the age of 18 to 60,” he
told The Post. Kuleba attributed
the incidents to a chaotic situa-
tion at the border, Onyeama said.
Onyeama added that a number
of Nigerian citizens in Ukraine
have fled to Romania, Poland,
Hungary and Slovakia, and that
the government is trying to get
them back to Nigeria. He is also
trying to evacuate about 300 Ni-
gerian students stranded at Sumy
State University, in eastern
Ukraine, near the Russian border.
“We’re trying as best as we can to
see if we can have a safe corridor
to cross through Russia,” he said.
He called reports on social me-
dia of the treatment some Niger-
ians have received at the border
from Ukrainian officials “harrow-
ing” and “deplorable.” Onyeama
added: “The question is, how do
you know whether these were sort
of just rogue officials or whether
there was any kind of state sanc-
tion to what they were doing?” Hereiterated that the Ukrainian
minister insisted there had been a
directive to let everybody leave.
Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign
minister, announced on Wednes-
day an emergency hotline for for-
eign students trying to leave the
country. At least one internation-
al student, a medical student
from India who was lining up for
food in the city of Kharkiv, has
died as a result of the invasion,
prompting the Indian Embassy to
issue an alert asking all Indian
students to leave the country im-
mediately.
According to a study released
by the Ukrainian government in
late 2020, tens of thousands of
students from abroad attend
school in Ukraine each year, with
the highest number from India.
Ten percent come from Morocco,
while others come from countries
including Nigeria, Azerbaijan
and Turkmenistan.
Unable to board a bus to the
Polish border, Orakpo went back
to her city and managed to board
a train to Hungary. She is now
living with a friend in Debrecen,
she says. She doesn’t know what
to do next.
“I don’t have any money. I don’t
have any clothes. I have nothing,”
she said.
Orakpo was a few months away
from graduating before the con-
flict started; her graduation was
scheduled for June 23. She is
limping from all the walking and
has blood clots in both her legs,
she says. Her plan was to move to
the United States after graduat-
ing, maybe to Baltimore, to do her
residency.
“Now I don’t know. I don’t
know what’s going to happen.
Medicine was the only thing I had
going on for me,” she said.Africans describe racist treatment w hile trying to flee
J ESSICA ORAKPO
Nigerian student Jessica Orakpo, 23, and a friend walked for over
12 hours to reach the border with Poland but were unable to cross.PHOTOS BY SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POSTAt right, George Keburia wipes away tears after saying goodbye to
his wife, Maya, and children after they boarded a train to Lviv at
the railway station in Odessa, Ukraine, on Saturday, above and top
right. At top, Ukrainian women and children, among hundreds
attempting to flee violence before the war reaches the city, wait to
board a train at the Odessa station.