Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Lesser Known Sisters

Shoes, pillows, dog leashes, and earpods mix with rubble in Ukraine’s besieged cities from Kyiv to Mariupol. This is what the photos capturing the mass destruction of Ukrainian neighborhoods by Russian invaders convey to audiences across the globe. “It looks like a post-apocalyptic video game. It’s horrifying,” says Brian Milakovsky, former Ukrainian resident, “There’s almost not a single public object in the city that I was living in that hasn’t been severely damaged1.”

The latest numbers from the U.N. estimate that 14,000 people have been killed on both sides, but the greatest toll has been on civilians, like Brian, who have endured unspeakable pain and loss.

We all know this story. It’s harrowing.

Meanwhile, the largest humanitarian crisis in the world has been unraveling for eight years without stopping––and no, it’s not about Ukraine, this is about the country of Yemen. The Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen has caused around half a million deaths and placed over 20 million people2 in need of humanitarian aid due to starvation and other public health crises.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has profited billions in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and by extension, has played a major role in the suffering of Yemeni people.

Meanwhile, after over a year of civil war and an even longer time of political tension in Tigray, which resulted in a mass exodus of Eritreans and Ethiopians over the years, refugees from the region have been trying to find their way to safer areas in Europe and the United States, only to be held in detention camps in neighboring countries3. Like Yemen, the violence has produced famine conditions, affecting nearly two million displaced Tigrayan people4.

Meanwhile, as it only took 12 hours for a white Ukrainian mother and her children to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, some Guatemalan refugees suffering from ongoing persecution and climate disasters have been waiting for 10 years. Enrique Morones, PhD. and founder of Border Angels, recently spoke at the Climate Refugees conference at Harvard University and urged folks with this message, “We need to be outraged. If you’re not, you’re not paying attention.”

Meanwhile, the trend of autocratic rulers bullying other countries and ethnic groups into submission is a threat to us all. It’s also not a foreign problem, for it’s written into our own history as well. See The 1619 Project or An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States or read up on Hawaii’s last monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani.

So, meanwhile, as millions of refugees are displaced from their homes and seek some kind of peace, we exist in the balmy town of Castro Valley attending to or ignoring our liberal guilt. It’s not enough that we voice our grievances towards Russia, or send pocket change to Ukrainian refugees. These are important, yes, but let’s start to pay attention to the patterns happening all over the globe and stop pretending like the last eight years of war in Yemen hasn’t been just as horrific as the two-month atrocity in Ukraine. One thing we can do is contact your elected officials. Demand that the U.S. government stop being complicit in the suffering of our brothers and sisters, and more specifically to stop funding the nationstates perpetrating war crimes in Yemen by supporting Representatives Jayapal and DeFazio when they introduce a new bill to end U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s military campaign. Ask them for immigration reform to speed up the refugee and asylum processes for Tigrayans, Yemenis, and Central Americans before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, as we pray for the life and liberty of Ukrainians, we cannot forget these other human rights violations are still happening in other countries, or be complicit in giving special privileges to White refugees over Black and Brown refugees and asylum seekers.

–By Monique Yoo Gomes, MSW candidate at the University of California, Berkeley

FOOTNOTES:
1 https://www.democracynow.org/2022/4/21/putin_invasion_ruins_donbas_economic_recovery
2 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423
3 https://www.nytimes.com/article/ethiopia-tigray-conflict-explained.html 

4 https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2022/3/1/nowhere-to-run-eritrean-refugees-in-tigray