- Syrian journalist lament open discriminations at Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania border crossings
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening called a second high-level meeting on the Ukraine crisis after it was decided in an earlier meeting on Sunday to send four Ministers to the neighbouring countries of the war-hit nation to coordinate efforts to evacuate Indian students stranded there.
Modi had chaired a meeting on Sunday evening as well and had asserted that the safety and evacuation of Indians from Ukraine, attacked by Russia, is a top priority for his government.
Union ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and V K Singh will be going as “special envoys” of India, government sources had earlier said.
This is just as Ukrainian refugees are filing into neighbouring countries by the hundreds of thousands with some of the refugees clutching children in one arm, belongings in the other.
And they’re being heartily welcomed, by leaders of countries like Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania.
But while the hospitality has been applauded, it has also highlighted stark differences in treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, particularly Syrians who came in 2015. Some of the language from these leaders has been disturbing to them, and deeply hurtful.
“These are not the refugees we are used to…these people are Europeans,” Bulgarian President Rumen Radev told journalists earlier this week, of the Ukrainians. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people…This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…” “In other words,” he added, “there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees.”
Syrian journalist Okba Mohammad says that statement “mixes racism and Islamophobia.”