African students who had been living and working in Ukraine continue to call out racism from neighboring European Union countries while trying to flee the country amid the Russian invasion.
Students claim they have been left queuing without food or shelter
huddling in the cold without food or shelter—while native Ukrainians have been allowed through.
“We felt treated like animals,” 19-year-old student Barlaney Mufaro Gurure, a freshman at the National Aviation University, told Reuters. “When we left [Kyiv] we were just trying to survive,” she said. “We never thought that they would have treated us like that […] I thought we were all equal, that we were trying to stand together,” Gurure added.
As many as 660,000 people have fled Ukraine since the invasion, the United Nations refugee agency U.N.H.C.R. reports.
“The Ukrainian border guards were not letting us through,” Chineye Mbagwu, a 24-year-old doctor from Nigeria, told The New York Times. “They were beating people up with sticks” and tearing off their jackets, she added. “They would slap them, beat them and push them to the end of the queue. It was awful.”
African medical students have also told multiple news outlets that buses have been sent to Ukraine to transport people across the border—but the buses only accept Ukrainians. Africans were forced to walk.
The European Union (EU) has denied reports of discrimination against Africans at the border.
In an official statement, the EU states that “incorrect and skewed media reporting on this issue that has repeatedly appeared in various Kenyan outlets and social media, and calls for careful verification of the facts,” the press release said.
“Given that in some cases deliberate disinformation is being spread, the EU Embassies present in Kenya are ready to provide accurate data,” the statement continued.
