Africa-Press – Botswana. Around 368,000 people have fled Ukraine to Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova over the last few days, as per UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. The UN Refugee Agency is reporting long queues of people waiting to cross over into Poland, the main destination for those leaving Ukraine.
Foreign students from Africa and India studying at Ukrainian universities fleeing the country for bordering western nations have accused border security of ill-treatment and even racial discrimination, as per videos and students’ own accounts.
India’s main opposition party leader and Congress parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi on Monday shared a video of Indian students waiting to cross into Poland from Ukraine. A Ukrainian border guard is seen kicking one of the students in the clip.
The incident has sparked significant outrage in India. An Indian student who reportedly had to turn back from the Polish border after being denied a pass from Ukrainian officers claimed that some of his compatriots suffered fractures following assaults by the authorities.
“People at the border are troubled and harassed. Girls are being pulled from their hair and tortured. I don’t know what’s the reason for the aggression,” Deeksha Pandey, another Indian student, told NDTV. India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that he had taken up the matter with Ukraine’s ambassador in India.
Shringla also said on Sunday that nearly 1,000 Indians have been flown out of Romania and Hungary on four special flights, while another 1,000 have been evacuated through land routes to neighbouring nations – Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
A fifth flight from Bucharest, carrying 249 evacuated Indians, landed in New Delhi on Monday morning. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also held telephone conversations with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia’s “special operation” on 24 February.
In both his conversations, Modi sought cooperation from both governments in facilitating the evacuation of stranded Indians from Ukraine, as per official Indian readouts.
The videos, meanwhile, have raised concerns of racism against the border guards, with several accounts indicating that the border security is giving preferential treatment to White people amid the evacuation process.
African Students Also Complain of Discrimination
Several videos of African foreign students fleeing Ukrainian cities purport to depict them being threatened with guns at the Polish border. Another social media video that has triggered widespread outrage shows Ukrainian guards preventing fleeing Africans from boarding a train to Poland.
Thousands of African students from countries such as South Africa and Nigeria are believed to be studying at Ukrainian universities. An African student who fled Kiev to the western border with Poland told Al-Jazeera that he was mugged by some locals en route his destination.
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