Ukrainians are fleeing their country to Poland, hoping for a better life, but many of them face hatred and xenophobia there, which seemed to contradict European values, writes “Newsweek”.
Referring to the data of the Polish prosecutor’s office, the outlet reports that over the past 2 years the number of crimes committed on the basis of hatred towards people from neighboring Ukraine has only increased. Only in 2017, 190 such cases were recorded. At the same time, the Polish human rights representative assures that this data is “the tip of the iceberg”, because many victims of violence do not go to the police.
The reason for this is often a problem with the documents: someone stays in the country illegally, someone is working illegally. Others, as the media writes, do not turn to law enforcement agencies, as they do not trust those.
In turn, the Office of the Ombudsman of Poland analyzed the situation in the Małopolska Region. Experts conducted a survey among Ukrainians and calculated cases of aggression against them. As it turned out, only here the number of incidents reaches about 44.5 thousand, and most often the cause of crimes becomes nationality.