The war in Ukraine shocked the World.

It goes without saying that tensions were earlier prevalent, caused by drastically reducing minorities' rights by the Ukrainian governments that followed the Maidan Revolution, Crimea’s annexation and by the emergence of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

When Russian forces launched the special military operation in Ukraine, many women and children were forced to leave their country, to get to a safe place, to escape the atrocities of war. 

Ninety percent of the news we see is about Ukraine, refugees from Ukraine, how people do their best to help the refugees and solidarity with Ukraine, declared by musicians, actors, athletes. It’s normal to be helping people in need!

In my country, Romania, Ukraine refugees get free railway transportation (of course, Romanian citizens or refugees from other parts of the World have to pay), free medical services (while Romanians and refugees not from Ukraine could only get medical have "free" medical services if they have health insurance, otherwise they have to pay), and also free education. At our border with Ukraine, thousands of volunteers do everything to help the refugees, with food, beverages, and counseling. Even when they didn’t have a passport, our Immigration officers were really nice and let them in. 

The situation is "slightly" different when the refugees are not from Ukraine.

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Usually, in order to enter a European country, you need a passport (if you are not a European Union citizen) and a visa. Our Immigration Office has clear rules about that. But… who needs rules when the migrants are blue-eyed blondes? 

Of course, when Immigration officers catch some poor African, Asian or Middle Eastern poor souls looking for a better life, fleeing from the horrors of war and oppression from western-backed forces, the law must be obeyed and the migrants who committed the crime of illegally entering Romania go to prison or are sent back to the hell holes they were trying to escape, which is, many times, equivalent to a death sentence.

Same Immigration officers who are kindly helping refugees from Ukraine may have been involved months before in our frontiers operations, hunting refugees who tried their luck to transit Romania on their way to a better life.

A few days ago, far-right Italian politician Giorgia Meloni, a populist who made a career out of exploiting Italians’ xenophobia, said that refugees from Ukraine must be received with open arms, a few years after the government she was supporting was doing everything to stop refugees boats entering Italian waters, including attacking those boats. Giorgia Meloni didn’t hesitate to exhibit her racism and her double standards, by declaring that “It’s time to call a spade a spade: recognize the refugee status to someone who really is trying to escape a war and to send back those who are not (real) refugees”. I wonder how low a politician can go (well, for the racist Giorgia Meloni the bar was set pretty low, anyway), in order to change her mind so radically.

Another European politician, Santiago Abascal, the leader of a xenophobic hate group called VOX, which is the third most important party in Spain, welcomed the absorption of refugees coming from Ukraine, “because they are, indeed, war refugees”, but used the same rhetoric embraced by Giorgia Meloni and other xenophobic politicians and called Muslims trying to flee war-torn countries “invaders”.

Poland, ruled by the Law and Justice (PiS) Party, a hate group whose de facto leader and ruler of the country, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, refused to accept refugees from Africa and the Middle East, saying that migrants carry “all sorts of parasites and protozoa, which … while not dangerous in the organisms of these people, could be dangerous here” and that Muslim migrants could be a problem for Poland’s homogenous society, is now open to refugees from Ukraine. Of course, not only because these refugees are blue-eyed blondes and not Muslims, but also because PiS officials know their country is going to get generous funds from European Union for welcoming Ukrainian refugees.

What can Muslim refugees do when facing Europe’s official double standard? I guess nothing… Maybe just pray to God to open the minds and hearts of Europe’s citizens, so that they will stop hating, stop voting for and electing Islamophobic politicians, and start seeing all migrants as equals, as human beings.