A friend and high school classmate, Lance Bowale, chided public commentators, especially of African descent who only justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or sympathise with Ukraine but overlooked racist and bigotry discriminations against Africans (and Muslims) in the war-zone.
After getting an apology for the omission, Lance graciously remarked, “We are all guilty.” Sympathisers of Ukraine must also draw attention to the war of discrimination meted to Africans by Ukrainians.
Ukrainians, while asking for support against Russian aggression, irrationally turned round to discriminate against coloured refugees because of the pigmentation of their skins.
Africans were prevented from boarding train coaches and buses that were conveying other races into safety in Romania, Hungary and Poland, former totalitarian countries believed to have adopted democracy’s humane values. The disturbing optics were insensitive, repulsive and inhuman.
You needed to see Ukrainians locking arms—forming a human chain—to prevent petrified African students from boarding the trains that were to take them and the Ukrainians to safety in neighbouring Poland.
A concerned female, likely to be African-American, from her looks, mannerisms and accent, reported that, “While (the rest of the world, including Africans), were collectively praying and coming together for the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian people (were) leaving Africans to die (in their stead).”
While frightened Ukrainians were fleeing their own country, they chose to prevent their African guests from taking advantage of the opportunity to save themselves from looming peril. Refugees can only travel by road because Ukraine has imposed a no-fly zone ban for aircraft.
A regrettable aspect of this man’s inhumanity to man is that mainstream media, like CNN, Al Jazeera and BBC international television networks, aren’t reporting these sad happenings.
This is one occasion that the world must give kudos to the alternative media run by citizen journalists with their doo-hickey gizmos, better known as android telephone handsets.
Social media is the new hero of balanced and truthful news reporting. Shame on the Western media that should be embarrassed by their inexplicable failure to report the obvious human interest news.
There is also a religious dimension to the wickedness. A cocky Polish government official coldly told a television interviewer why Poland would not accept Muslim refugees in the following words, “If you are asking me about Muslim illegal immigration (sic), none. Not even one will come to Poland…
“We took over two million Ukrainians who are working… peacefully in Poland. We will not receive even one Muslim, because this is what we promised.” To whom did Poland make this morbid promise?
Finally, the unrepentant Polish official added, “(Not taking in Muslim refugees) is what our people expect from our government… This is why Poland is so safe. The reason we have not even one terrorist attack. Look at the streets in Poland.”
He then exposed the bile of the racist and religious bigot in him and the Polish government: “We can be called populist, nationalist (or) racist, I don’t care! I care (only) about my family and about my country.”
Yet while discriminating against Africans, Ukrainians had enough milk of human kindness to serve tea and pastry to a young Russian soldier, a blond and blue-eyed agent of their Russian aggressor. They even phoned to assure his mother that he was safe on the war-front. He broke into tears when he heard his mother’s voice.
An apparently apologetic Ukrainian, witnessing the moving scene, even excused the young Russian soldier thus: “(The young Russian soldiers) don’t know why they are here (fighting the war). These young men, it’s not their fault.”
Interestingly, some reports swirling on social media claim that some of the African victims, dreading the poverty and insecurity in their own countries, are opting to remain in war zone Ukraine instead of returning home.
This, in spite of brazen discrimination from their inhumane Ukrainian hosts. That probably explains the laughable story, if it is true, that Nigerians who volunteer to fight for the liberty of Ukraine were asked to provide $1,000 for their visa and airfare.
Here is a classic Stockholm Syndrome of a victim identifying with his adversary. Some 200 Nigerians are reported to have volunteered to join the Ukraine Army to fight against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Incidentally, about 28 African nations, including Nigeria, in a United Nations General Assembly resolution, condemned Russia’s invasion of Donbas, the breakaway territory of Ukraine.
Only Eritrea, an Ethiopian breakaway, voted in favour of Russia. Seventeen other African nations, led by South Africa and Algeria, abstained. No votes were recorded for eight others led by Ethiopia and Cameroon.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to which African nations subscribe, is considering giving Ukraine a $5.2 billion lifeline to cushion the effects of the war.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, confirms free passage to neighbouring countries for about 5,000 Nigerians after the Nigerian government provided $8.5 million to evacuate them from Ukraine.
Some sceptical Nigerians, suspicious that the money could be diverted, are openly asking for a comprehensive report of how every dollar of that money is going to be spent.
Nigerian state actors are known to divert funds or resources from public purposes to private use. You might recall that COVID-19 palliative became a souvenir on the birthday of a female legislator of Lagos State House of Assembly.
Africans, who’ve travelled widely, will tell you that many people in rural Europe (East or West) have never seen or encountered a Black person. This writer once attracted the curiosity of a woman while having a continental breakfast in a hotel in rural Arbon, near Saint Gallen, in the Thurgar Canton of Switzerland.
This woman kept stealing furtive glances because she saw what she may have regarded as an exotic creature. She seemed surprised at the ability of a Black person to use the cutlery to consume European food with relish.
The average rural North American, European and Asian, who has not travelled wide, thinks a Black person is no more than Caliban; half-human, half monster, insolent, rebellious and uneducated child of nature, who always betrays poor judgement and can only be controlled by magic.
Caliban, a character in William Shakespeare’s drama, The Tempest, whose mother was witch Sycorax, is an unruly child of nature and reacts to his surroundings in a way that suggests that he is, deep down, an animal.
This world views prejudiced white and yellow folks into thinking the worst about any black person, no matter how emancipated and articulate. This prism interferes with these people’s relationships with persons of African descent.
In his book, Society, Sociologist Ely Chinoy wrote about the concept of race in the following words: “As a biological concept, race refers to a number of people who possess common inherited characteristics.
“Most racial classifications (apparently) are based on external physical traits: colour skin, hair and eyes; head form; type of hair; contours of the nose and jaw; height; body build; and amount of body hair.
“The racial interpretation of social and cultural variations assert that these biological characteristics account for a level and nature of a particular culture, the form of government, or the frequency of various patterns of behaviour.”
Anyway, no matter how Chinoy sugarcoats it, the world should insist that all races must get an equal chance of swift evacuation from certain death in war-torn Ukraine.
