Prominent Black attorneys who represented the families of Black men killed in police encounters helped form a civil society coalition to appeal on behalf of African refugees seeking escape from Ukraine, NBC News reported. Amid the Russian offensive into Ukraine, there have been numerous reports of discriminatory treatment African refugees attempting to flee Ukraine have been forced to endure, and on Tuesday, Filippo Grandi, commissioner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, acknowledged the legitimacy of some of those reports. “There should be absolutely no discrimination between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians, Europeans and non-Europeans,” the commissioner said. “Everybody is fleeing from the same risks.”
But everyone has not received the same treatment. MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid tweeted on Sunday: “Hearing that African students are being told they can’t get on buses to or in Poland or that they need to stand, because the seats are only for white refugees is a painful reminder that Europe’s history of colonialism & slavery left an ugly legacy on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Ben Crump, a noted civil rights attorney and a member of the civil coalition, has been reposting video featuring the stories of African refugees who have faced discrimination. He said on Twitter that “even in war, racism is alive and well.” In one tweet, Crump included viral video of a Black infant and caregiver left at the Polish border in freezing weather. Crump along with several other prominent legal professionals announced on Wednesday that they would file an appeal with the United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights and the committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.
Other members of the coalition include Carlos Moore, president of the National Bar Association; Jasmine Rand, a civil rights attorney who represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Peter Herbert, a Black British activist and retired judge; Jamaican Member of Parliament G. Anthony Hylton; and British solicitor Jacqueline McKenzie.
Robert Sanders, a retired captain with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, applauded the decision as "totally appropriate" in an interview with NBC News. He also said that early skepticism about the reported discrimination from non-Black people was disingenuous. “One of those things that struck me was the immediate failure of white people all over the place,” he said. “To be in disbelief that racism was happening at the borders … ‘Oh, well, there must be some other reason why they’re holding them back. They’re letting women and children out.’
“I hear that and I say, ‘You’re giving me an invalid excuse because you can’t fess up and come to grips with the reality of the world that you live in and, in part, some of you helped create.”
Rachel Onyegbule, a Nigerian student in Lviv for her first year of medical school, told CNN she was stranded in Shehyni, a town about 400 miles from Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv. "More than 10 buses came and we were watching everyone leave," she told the news network. "We thought after they took all the Ukrainians they would take us, but they told us we had to walk, that there were no more buses and told us to walk. Saakshi Ijantkar, a medical student in her fourth year from Mumbai, India, told CNN border authorities allow 30 Indians in only after 500 Ukranians are allowed in.
Dammy Raji, a Nigerian medical student, told NBC News when she tried to leave Ukraine for Poland, she wasn't allowed on two trains leaving Lviv in western Ukraine. “Ukrainians want their people to go first,” she said. Raji was eventually able to make it to Poland via train and she told NBC News nongovernmental organization helped. “They are really nice, and there are many places organized by NGOs for foreigners because of what they are hearing online," she said. "So I think the awareness is what has helped us.”
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