Ukraine’s Roma refugees recount discrimination
Hundreds of Ukraine’s Roma people face an uncertain future in Moldova’s capital Chisinau as many are not documented.
Cristina, 41, is one of them. She lost everything she owned after Russia bombed her house in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv.
“Kharkiv is like my palm now. People’s houses and the city centre are destroyed, there’s absolutely nothing left,” she told Al Jazeera.
As bombs were destroying the only home she ever had, all she could do was grab her children and leave. Now, she sits in the middle of the running track, with no documents or clue about her next steps.
“If a bomb falls on your house and you hear a tank shooting, what will you grab first, documents or your children,” she asked.
Cristina travelled from Kharkiv to Lviv, then to the Moldovan border. But there, she said, she spent four days in the cold waiting to enter Moldova, without any food or water.
Once they found shelter, she and other Roma were chased out of their tents by the Ukrainian border authorities.
Cristina is one of an estimated 400,000 Ukraine’s Roma people who, besides the trauma of war, have to cope with discrimination along their evacuation route out of Ukraine.
