(CMR) Twenty-four Jamaican students are among scores of migrants in Ukraine who have faced racism while fleeing to safety as Russian attacks continue to devastate the country.
The Jamaican students who arrived in Lviv from Kharkiv by train on Saturday are now being forced to walk 20km to Poland after the bus they were on was attacked by angry people.
According to the Independent, black people living in the region say they have been left to languish, with some taking to Twitter in recent days to share accounts of abandonment.
Jamaica's foreign affairs minister, Kamina Smith, said the students had to disembark the bus that was taking them to the border after it was attacked.
On Sunday, Johnson said two of the Jamaican students on the 20-kilometer walk fell, and one received medical care in an ambulance. There were 28 Jamaicans studying in Ukraine when it was attacked by Russia.
There is said to be a racial hierarchy for boarding transportation in Ukraine with children first, followed by white women, white men, and then Africans.
“Some of the locals are ‘prioritizing' Ukrainians, and black people are struggling to get onto buses, facing hostility or being denied at the border,” medical student Korrine Sky told The Independent.
Currently, thousands of Ukrainians are traveling to the Polish border in nearly freezing temperatures.
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