The US-led West is hypocritically silent about the latest human rights violations taking place in Ukraine, which isn’t surprising considering that it was never truly sincere about its support of such victims. That country’s Indian residents have shared footage on social media that was later picked up by their national media showing how cruelly they’re being treated by Ukrainian officials as they try to cross over into the EU following the onset of Russia’s special operation.
They described their experience as torture because they’ve been assaulted, threatened, and even shot at by their host state’s border guards. This follows footage that’s been circulating of African students being abused at train stations, some of whom were even physically removed from their carriages in order to make room for non-Africans who are also desperately trying to flee the country. Quite clearly, Ukrainian society has truly become just as fascist as Russia described it as.
Regrettably, Africans have always been at risk of racist abuse in Ukraine ever since it obtained independence, but the equally deplorable situation with Indians is completely new. They used to be welcomed by society since it fondly remembered their former Soviet country’s special and privileged strategic partnership with India. Bollywood productions are also popular there, as they are elsewhere across the world. Indian students used to feel respected and safe in Ukraine until all this happened.
The only explanation that makes sense is that they’re being cruelly punished by Ukrainian state representatives due to their government’s principled neutrality at the United Nations. New Delhi has always remained outside of disputes that don’t directly concern it. The country has very close relations with both Russia and Ukraine, as well as with the wider West with whom Russia is feuding. Taking any given side would be detrimental to its grand strategic interests and against its foreign policy traditions.
Nobody in New Delhi could have ever imagined that their citizens in Ukraine would essentially be held as hostages by that state and even tortured at the border. These human rights violations are being given very little coverage among Western media in order to avoid adding credence to Russia’s description of that state as fascist. These double standards expose the self-interested hypocrisy of the US-led West’s human rights rhetoric wherein it only employs such whenever it suits those countries’ interests.
Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and other non-Western media should urgently cover these gross human rights violations against Africans and Indians. No person should be punished for the problems that any given state or representative thereof has with their home country. This completely contradicts the most fundamental basis of human rights and the UN Charter. It shows how fascist Ukrainian society has indeed become and confirms that the US-led West doesn’t care about African or Indian lives.