Photo courtesy of WikiMedia Commons
As Ukrainian residents flee the country amid the current Russian invasion, African students trying to leave Ukraine have faced racial bias. Some Mount Holyoke students have drawn attention to the racism of some media portrayals of refugees of color.
By Cynthia Akanaga ’25
Staff Writer
In the wake of Russian military forces invading Ukraine on February 24, Mount Holyoke’s McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives organized “War in Ukraine: Why? What Next?” This event was held virtually on March 8. The event, moderated by Professor of Politics and Chair of International Relations Sohail Hashmi, featured Professor of Russian Studies Stephen Jones, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Politics Christopher Mitchell and Cyrus Vance Visiting Professor in International Relations Natalie Sabanadze, who shared an in-depth discussion regarding the invasion. One of the main topics of discussion was the differences between how this war is portrayed by the media as opposed to conflicts in the Global South. Additionally, the speakers discussed the racism being faced by African and Black refugees fleeing Ukraine.
Jones outlined reasons why he believed the Ukraine invasion was a rare occurrence. “It’s particularly surprising given [that] it’s happening in Europe … given the fact that for 70 years or so, there’s been peace in Europe,” Jones said. “Europe, in some sense, represented this liberal international order that had promoted political stability and peace. So, in that sense, I guess it comes as a great surprise.”
Many journalists, such as Lucy Watson, an ITV news correspondent reporting from Poland, expressed how this event was almost incomprehensible to them. According to NBC News, Watson discussed the Ukrainians’ crisis, saying on-air, “Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, Third World nation. This is Europe.” The British pundit Daniel Hannan wrote in The Telegraph, “War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.” In an interview for Al Jazeera on the refugee crisis, journalist Peter Dobbie remarked, “What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East … [or] areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to.”
Diamond Abiakalam-Chinagorom ’25, a student from Nigeria, stated, “Many in the world believe that war only occurs in certain countries that are in the Global South. So, that’s [why] I feel like everybody’s acting surprised.”
Jones also noted that Western countries have had an “extraordinary reaction” to the invasion. “Germany has done a complete vault fast in its foreign policy,” Jones stated. “Who would have thought the United States would’ve banned Russian oil unilaterally.”
The EU and Western countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada promptly imposed financial sanctions on Russia. Six days after the invasion, the U.N. called for an emergency special session to come up with a resolution for the situation in Ukraine. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, noted that “it was the first time in nearly 40 years that the council had referred a crisis to an emergency special session,” as paraphrased by Foreign Policy.
Tia Mbabazi ’25, a student from Uganda, said, “It kind of comes down to the fact that if it wasn’t someone who is white or someone who is in these certain countries that were considered to be more privileged or more civilized than other countries, their reaction wouldn’t be the same. [This is] mainly because people look at people from … African countries as inhumane, like they’re not [people]. … This is the kind of thing that they go through every single day and night.”
At “War in Ukraine: Why? What Next?,” Sabanadze touched on how differently countries are treating Ukrainian European refugees from previous migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
“The welcoming of the Ukrainian European migrants has certainly been different from the kind of migration crisis we have seen before — for example, refugees coming from Syria or Afghanistan,” she said. “Countries that are most welcoming to Ukrainian refugees, such as Poland and Hungary … have been most resistant [in the past].” Sabanadze continued, “In some ways, it is normal and understandable that you feel greater empathy to the neighboring country. And also, there is a shared history for Hungary. … There are a lot of Hungarians living across the border on the Ukrainian side. So, all these elements [come into] play.”
According to Ebony News, the Polish interior minister Mariusz Kaminski told reporters that “anyone fleeing from bombs, from Russian rifles, can count on the support of the Polish state … We will accept anyone who needs it. The Ukrainian society gets more afraid and stressed. We are ready to accept tens, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.” When referring to Ukrainian European refugees during a news conference, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, “We’re letting everyone in,” NBC News reported.
The Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, cleared up any confusion about why doors closed for refugees from Africa and the Middle East were suddenly flung open for Ukrainian European refugees. “These are not the refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans,” he said, according to NBC. “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.”
Sabanadze acknowledged that there is a degree of “hidden racism” to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
According to Instick Media, for those trying to escape war-stricken Ukraine, priority is given to “White women and children first, white men second, then everybody else afterward if there was any space left.” While the Ukrainian nationals are welcomed, many Africans in Ukraine have reported being treated unfairly by Ukrainian authorities. “Chineye Mbagwu, a doctor from Nigeria … spent more than two days stranded at the Poland-Ukraine border crossing in the town of Medyka, as the guards let Ukrainians cross but blocked foreigners,” The New York Times reported.
Emmanuel Nwulu, a Nigerian student, was told by Ukrainian security that “Blacks could not board the train,” The New York Times reported.
There have also been reported cases of violence. Saakshi Ijantkar, a fourth-year medical student from India, told CNN, “I saw an Egyptian man standing at the front with his hands on the rails, and because of that one guard pushed him with so much force and the man hit the fence, which is covered in spikes, and he lost consciousness … We took him outside to give him CPR. They just didn't care and they were beating the students, they didn't give two hoots about us, only the Ukrainians.”
Historian Kimberly St. Julian Varnon described how students from Africa who have successfully made it out of Ukraine into Hungary “are now considered third-country nationals and have been told they must move to another country or go back home within 30 days,” as reported by CBS News.
In response to the racism experienced by these African students, Mbabazi said, “It’s very unsettling that this is happening because they have no influence on what’s happening to them. They’re literally out there just to study and make a living for themselves.”
In response to the widespread racial bias, many African countries have stepped up to help their citizens. The African Union released a statement highlighting that it was against international law to restrict safe and timely border passage during war times, University World News reported. According to Ghana’s foreign minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, at least 500 nationals have been evacuated from Ukraine, DW reported. Nigeria, which has the highest number out of all African countries of students in Ukraine, has resulted in airlifting the students out of Ukraine due to the racial bias at the Poland, Hungary and Romania borders, University World News said.
In response to the evacuation techniques implemented by individual African countries, Nafeesah Ahmed-Adedoja ’23, an international student from the United Kingdom and Nigeria, said, “African unity is most needed in situations like this. I think that instead of it being like, ‘You’re from Nigeria’ or ‘You’re from Ghana,’ it should have been a collective ‘let’s bring all of our African students home safely to one place in Africa.’ From there, countries can use their own charter flights to get them back to their respective countries and places.”
To encourage more culturally sensitive reporting, Mbabazi said, “We need to understand how people get to pick and choose their struggles. Many minorities don’t get to pick and choose when to worry about their race. It's our reality in a sense, so it’s upsetting. We need to talk about these topics as being more intertwined and not separate [issues].” She added too that shining light on the racial discrimination doesn’t discredit the real suffering of other Ukrainians. “Two things can be true at the same time. You don’t have to choose which side to defend,” Mbabazi said. “There are Ukrainians who are suffering from the plights of war. But there are also Black [and] African people who are facing the plights of war plus racial bias in Ukraine. They’re facing two struggles at once, and we should empathize instead of making it an issue that’s too delicate to talk about.”