The current Ukrainian crisis showed that some refugees are more equal than others

Source: The Art Of Boo

Moustafa Byoumi wrote a brilliant article in The Guardian lately (please read here) whereby he detailed how "racist" the coverage of Ukraine is. Of course, by now, many of us are familiar with CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata masterpiece of journalism when he uttered live on air (about Ukraine), that it "isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen" - now of course, when Mesopotamia was a civilization, I am not sure what the rest of the world was.

Let me give you this other story, when trying to save almost extinct species, human beings - when interviewed - wanted to allocate more money towards species with anthropomorphic features. Anthropomorphism is that quality where the animal species has much more "resemblance" to the humans. And even the title of this post is a paraphrasing of George Orwell's "all animals are equal, some more equal than others". I am not directly comparing almost extinct animal species to refugees, but sadly the comparison does stand on the ground.

I have previously detailed the one-sided love between Lebanon and France (please look here). But this is just a small example of how hard it is for a Lebanese to get a visa to Europe. Lebanon has hosted, per capita, the highest amount of Syrian refugees in the world. When Europe was squabbling about a thousand here and there, we had more than 2 million (the latest figures still indicate 1.5 million if you want to know). Even inside Lebanon, the Damour massacre has displaced so many people who still did not go back to their original villages. 

Actually, Christian Lebanese always had this fallacy in their head, that Europe wants them. It would welcome them with open arms. But of course, these are the same people who never tried to apply to a Schengen visa - last time I did it took 60 papers. 60. Papers. I can tell you stories about how embassies treated me (at the time I was teaching at a university, with two full passports filled with stamps and visas and still, they made it incredibly hard to get the visa. Small example: I asked (backed by papers) to get a multiple entry visa. I got one. For how long? 4 weeks! When did finish? One day before Christmas! So it was impossible to actually spend the holidays in Europe even if then I was loaded with money).

But all this to tell you, no - as Lebanese, Syrians, Afghans we are not so welcome to Europe. Of course, just to be clear, considering I grew up in a war, all these sights from Ukraine bother me immensely (and yes, they trigger flashbacks for me). But whereas the whole world rallies around Ukraine (and rightfully so), when all this was happening in Palestine, no one moved a muscle.

Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph put it as succinctly as possible when talking about Ukrainians, "(they) watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts" - you hear that Lebanese "influencers"?

So, how is social media helping Ukraine?

I know writing this post is counter-intuitive for someone who has the oldest still running blog in Lebanon. But hang in there with me. Yes, I realize that getting the Ukrainian stories across via the media is very important and I am all for it. I keep refreshing The Guardian page umpteen times a day to get new info. And yes, I love that story about the "Snake Island" who told the Russians to go "f*ck themselves" or the man who stood in front of a tank a la Tiananmen square.

But on the flip side, Twitter is just full of hashtags about the crisis, and every other post on Linkedin (literally every other post) is about Urkaine, thankfully I am shielded from what is going on on Facebook as I have zero friends there but can only imagine the calamity, oh and Instagram has stories upon stories (because apparently it is now more fashionable to post stories) about the country. 

My question is: How will this be more successful than the #bringbackourgirls just go name one movement which started and ended online with zero action on the ground. I know not. This blogpost is just the utmost of hypocrisy: Here I am writing about it with zero effect. But at least I recognize that.

And it saddens me we are confusing posting online with actually doing something meaningful on the ground even if - I am the first to admit it - there is little to nothing I can do.

"Liking isn't helping" said that wonderful Crisis Relief Singapore ad. Isn't it time we admit it?

Ukrainian women stereotyped again by Lebanese men

Now this is interesting. A while back Wiam Wahab, a Lebanese politician described Ukrainian women as simply prostitutes prompting a very severe reply from the Ukrainian embassy and an apology from Wahab. Lately (that would be February 16 in page 8 of Al Sharq newspaper whose editor in chief is Awni Al Kaaki) came a photo of a very suggestive Ukranian woman with the words "adopt a Ukrainian to protect her from Russian occupation". The image (as per the rebuke of the Ukrainian embassy) contains "gender identity consideration, and contains harm based on gender, and insults the dignity of Ukrainian nationals". Well, it goes to say that the image in question shows a very scantily clad woman, with very revealing attire that delimit her incredibly suggestive forms. 

This obviously is a wink to the fact that for a long time, Eastern European women would come to Lebanon as "artistes" and were staples in night shows or what is called "super night clubs" (in other countries referred to as Gentlemen's Clubs) where women in minimum clothing would perform "numeros". It is also agreed that men can invite them to their tables, open bottles of champagne for them and when not working at clubs can go out with them (normally with financial retributions for their services). Naturally all this falls under stereotyping - except that women from certain countries cannot go easily to Lebanon under the age of 40 due specifically to the idea that they will be performing in such clubs or be of loose morals. 

This is a case which really happened: A woman from a certain European country had enormous trouble coming to Lebanon because she was under the age of 40. The problem is that she wanted to come here to help her daughter, married to a Lebanese deliver her first grandchild as her daughter was married to a Lebanese man. Which both women marrying young (the grandmother and the mother) you can imagine the conundrum. Actually having worked at the airport I can tell you that women coming from these countries are immediately rounded up and kept aside as soon as their plane lands, whether they come here as "artiste", wives of local men or any other designation.

Which brings us back to stereotyping of Eastern European women, and Ukrainian women specifically. It is to note that Al Kaaki has not apologized for the publication of the photo.