On 'Ukrainian Tourists'
On Sunday, a local government worker informed Alex that the refugee crisis was over. The thousands of people passing through Przemyśl Głowny train station each day were, in fact, tourists. How did he know that? Because their suitcases were too small for them to be real refugees. This attitude, seemingly shared by people of all ranks in the local government, has now led to the closure of the medical point at the reception. When, on that same day, a mother and son approached me, both clearly having some kind of allergic reaction, with their eyes puffed up to the point that they could barely see, all I could suggest to them was that they waited for a bus to the refugee centre, since there are no longer any medical professionals on site, and it being a Sunday meant that there would be no open pharmacies. ‘When will the bus be?’ They asked me. ‘No idea’, I had to reply. There are no longer free municipal busses to and from the station and the refugee centre. Tourists don’t need free municipal busses. The casualties of this bizarre attitude become more apparent every day. World Central Kitchen, which provides thousands of hot meals per day, has been told it has to leave by the end of the month. The Ukrainian tourists should be supporting local restaurants.
It is perhaps unfair to be pointing the finger solely at the local government in Przemyśl for this attitude. The national government has also ended free train tickets for refugees, as of 1st July. Aside from a free train to Prague, which must be booked weeks in advance, each evening, and a free train to Hannover every other day, everything else must now be paid for. The first evacuation train to Hannover since the loss of free tickets left on Saturday. About half of the people queuing for it managed to get on. The rest will try again tonight, along with everyone else who has arrived since. On the platform, anyone wearing a volunteer’s high vis is hounded by people asking to be given priority – ‘I’m disabled’; ‘I’m pregnant’; ‘I’ve come from Mariupol/Kharkiv/Kremenchuk’. We don’t have the power to give anyone priority, that’s at the discretion of the train guards, and how do you give priority to a group of people where every single one of them has been through more hell than you could possibly imagine? All we can do is help with bags and tell people that if they don’t get on this train, there’ll be another one in two days.
Some snippets from the past week: Yana, a musician from Kharkiv, arrived with her two young daughters. We put them in a hostel for two nights whilst they waited for the Hannover train. On Friday, I went for a walk with them. ‘The city has been bombed to the ground’, Yana told me, ‘there’s nothing left’. ‘That’s not true, mama,’ her seven-year-old interjected, ‘only half of it’s been flattened actually!’. Yana and her children are tourists in the eyes of the mayor of Przemyśl. Natalya from Kremenchuk told Alex how she had been inside the mall when the missiles hit. The deaths must be in the hundreds, she told him, and would be mostly people in their twenties and thirties, who worked there. She had arrived with her cat, and a small bag. Too small a bag for her to be considered a refugee in the eyes of the mayor of Przemyśl. Last night I put a family of three – mum, dad, and a four-month-old baby, from Kharkiv Oblast – in a hotel room, and chatted to them for a while. I commented on how well-behaved the baby was, not making a sound. ‘She’s in shock,’ they replied, ‘it’s the first night of her life that she hasn’t heard air raid sirens’. According to the authorities, they are yet another set of tourists.
Please continue to donate, via our PayPal or our JustGiving. The online charity auction in support of KHARPP is also running until Sunday, with plenty of amazing artworks to bid on. As larger organisations are forced out, being able to continue our work and expand our scope is essential. As well as our work in Przemyśl, our support for the humanitarian effort in Kharkiv continues, and we are still providing urgent medical supplies and food. None of this is possible without your donations.
Thank you, and Slava Ukraini!
Yana’s daughter, on the evacuation train to Germany (posted with permission).
Two girls from Zaporizhzhia who had arrived with their mums with all their possessions in plastic bags, posing with new KHARPP-gifted suitcases (also posted with permission).
the train station at midday on Sunday.