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world against racism
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World Against Racism - Y Byd Yn Erbyn Hiliaeth
British Government double standards show time-hollowed racist angle, disavowing Afghan or Syrian refugees, or simply any refugee without the “European” title.
On the 20th March, outside the Welsh halls of Government at Cardiff Bay- The Senedd, around 200 protestors and
I joined Stand Up To Racism Cardiff in a March Against Racism: police, institutional or government led. Emotively, speakers reclaimed the voices of their brothers or sisters who they had lost to such grievances, even when mountains shifted from the silent words spoken from the simple clutch of a raised fist. Words were spoken about families and lives left behind, out of desperation for safe passage ways of safety. I could only envision these same words being repeated in years to come from any hopeful survivors of the main story in our headlines today- the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I was stood in the present, listening to refugees’ stories about the past, which I knew were to become so many Ukrainian’s futures.
Lamentingly, more than 5,000 souls have been taken since the biggest military mobilisation since World War 2, the unprovoked and unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine. Almost 3.7 million refugees have been forced to leave their country, while an estimated 6.48 million people have had to be displaced within the country, thus far (writing on the 25th of March). Boris Johnson’s spokesperson told reporters that 138,000 people had registered interest in the Homes for Ukraine scheme so far- a scheme promoting the housing of a Ukrainian refugee for 6 months minimum, for £350 a month from the Government. While Britons have seen such devastation broadcast on their television screens at home before, from such tragedies of injustice like the Syrian Civil War, or the Afghan battle, somehow Facebook feeds seem to be more populated this time with words of encouragement, donations or filters of the country’s flag. Why? Why hasn’t this amount of support been showed for every war/conflict before this?
While this nation-wide support for Ukraine is inevitably good, it only poses the question of why, from Government and civilians, this level of urgency was never applied to such areas of conflict before this, for asylum seekers/ refugees outside of Europe. Safe passage for all except those non-EU? While faced with the unimaginable in fleeing for safety, appeals from both the Ukrainian government and the UN acknowledged that Black refugees have been subject to racism at the country’s borders, simultaneously. Speaking to The Independent, Osarumen, a father-of-three, said he, his family members and other refugees were told to leave a bus about to cross the border and told, “No Blacks”. “In all of my years as an activist, I have never seen anything like this. When I look into the eyes of those who are turning us away, I see bloodshot racism; they want to save themselves and they are losing their humanity in the process”.
Why would this judgement of skin colour ever cross your mind when faced with such yearning and desperation of that of a fleeing man and his family. Black Africans have been arguably ignored in a pandemic, and replaced with ill-fitting treatments instead, and are being left to languish and ultimately die in a state of war. What steps are we missing to have jumped to such unacceptable means of what we see fitting as human decency and when will history finally cease in repeating its same unjustifiable and dehumanising surface value discrimination. My heart goes out to those endangered by the Russian invasion, those who have lost someone due to this too, and to those suffering at the filtered down, blatant racism that has failed to change its spots.u
by Maddison Ball
