The New York Times: Humanitarian aid workers in Budapest, Hungary are stingy and strict when the refugees are Romani

Among the human beings doing their best to reach safety as Russian soldiers assault Ukraine are refugees of Romani origin who are encountering bias and discrimination from volunteers. News server Romea.cz has already reported on the case of two Romani refugee Ukrainian women with four children who were twice asked to leave accommodation facilities in the Czech Republic for no reason, or Czech bus drivers who refused to pick up Romani refugee Ukrainian mothers, originally from the Kyiv area, and bring them to safety, as well as other cases where volunteers do not want to transport Romani refugee Ukrainian families. 

Yesterday The New York Times reported online about the approach being taken toward some Romani refugee Ukrainians in Hungary. At a center offering humanitarian aid in Budapest’s Nyugati train station, a family of Romani refugees said the staffers demanded they show their passports before giving them refreshments.

Other citizens of Ukraine were not asked to prove their citizenship by those same staffers. They then gave the children who were Romani one beverage and one sandwich each while offering non-Romani refugees as many refreshments as they wanted.

Dark-skinned students have also encountered racism while fleeing the war. The American television station CNN has gathered their testimonies, including that some of the guards on the border between Poland and Ukraine treated them in a racist way.

Russia escalated its invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, 24 February. According to the UN, the fighting has cost at least 474 civilian lives so far.

Information about hundreds of other victims is still in the process of being verified. More than 2 million people have already fled into neighboring countries.