The African Union condemned on February 28 the episodes of racism suffered by some African citizens at the Ukrainian borders, where they would have been prevented from going along with the other refugees.
“The images are shocking, the testimonies revolting”, writes the Burkinabé newspaper Aujourd’hui au Faso, which speaks of “shameful segregation”: “Many Africans fleeing fighting in Ukraine are abused or are prevented from boarding buses and trains reserved for civilians who want to leave the country “. Among the stories circulating in the media is that of Ngubu, a Nigerian student in Kiev, who tells the Sahara Reporters website that he was pushed off a train bound for Poland and received a dirty diaper on his face.
In Nigeria, dozens of parents of the approximately four thousand students stranded in the war-torn country protested outside the Russian embassy in Abuja. In response, the Nigerian government organized flights to countries bordering Ukraine to repatriate their citizens, writes The Punch.
Protests have also broken out in Lebanon against the Beirut government, accused of having abandoned thousands of Lebanese to themselves, writes L’Orient-Le Jour.
Less than a dozen African countries have an embassy or consulate in Ukraine, notes Jeune Afrique, which makes repatriation even more logistical. Before the outbreak of the war, just under twenty thousand African students – mostly from Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana – were studying in the Eastern European country, attracted by the low tuition fees, the affordable cost of living and the relative security. Which is no longer there today: on February 26, a 25-year-old Algerian student died in Kharkiv, hit by a stray bullet, reports Middle East Eye. He was in Ukraine to study aerospace engineering. Algeria, which enjoys good relations with Russia, had not invited its citizens to leave the country.