‘The Ukrainians are real refugees.’ Tamer Alalloush has heard that statement a few times in recent weeks and it touches him. The Syrian (35) himself fled the war in his country in 2015.
Understand him well: he has never felt unwelcome in the Netherlands. He learned the language and quickly found a job. But now that he sees how much wider the arms of the Dutch open to the Ukrainians, it hurts a bit. ‘You see that double standard everywhere’, says Alalloush, who studied international relations in Syria. “The Ukrainians are getting a lot more help now.”
He is also committed to the newcomers and he is certainly not the only Syrian in the Netherlands. ‘Precisely because we understand better than anyone what the Ukrainians are going through right now.’ As a community manager for the refugee organization Open Embassy, he is busy setting up a helpdesk for newly arrived Ukrainians.
At the Open Embassy office in Amsterdam, he sits opposite Elena Volokhova (58), one of the 25 Ukrainian volunteers living in the Netherlands who man the helpdesk. ‘That their bank cards don’t work everywhere, that’s really an issue, isn’t it?’ He looks questioningly at the Ukrainian. ‘I have indeed heard that you can use a Ukrainian bank card in some stores and not in others,’ says Volokhova. They have to figure that out.
‘Clearly clear that Russia represents evil’
Volokhova, who has been in the Netherlands since 1993, is committed to her compatriots full-time. She also notices how friendly the reception is. ‘It is possible that the Dutch identify more easily with Ukrainians because they come from a European country. Perhaps they find the situation in the Middle East more unclear. In this war it is crystal clear that Russia represents evil.’ Another difference: Refugees crossing the Mediterranean are more often single men, while mainly women and children arrive from Ukraine.
Whatever the reason, many more Dutch people now seem willing to take people into their homes. The organization Takecarebnb, which matches refugees with host families, was delighted last summer when a hundred host families registered in a month. They called it the Afghanistan effect at the time, during the period of the Taliban taking power. But that hundred is suddenly meager in comparison to the Ukraine effect: now 25,000 Dutch people are offering a room. Even King Willem-Alexander and Máxima are going to receive Ukrainians, it was announced on Monday.
Municipalities are also shifting to a higher gear. While reception organization COA had to peddle for places for asylum seekers last year, municipalities are now making vacant buildings available in no time.
Sometimes it is even said out loud that the beds offered are only for Ukrainians. Take Hoogeveen mayor Karel Loohuis (PvdA) for example: ‘It cannot be the case that if we now set up places for people from Ukraine, there would still be a chance that they would be filled by others,’ he said plainly to the local council. According to the mayor, this would be at the expense of support among the local population.
According to Loohuis, the ‘support’ for Ukrainians is ‘many times greater’ than for refugees from other countries. “You may think so, but that’s a fact.” According to the mayor, ‘a lot of other Drenthe municipalities’ think the same, even though the central government calls on no distinction to be made.
In Oirschot, Brabant, the city council voted last year to accommodate refugees in an empty rehab clinic. The local CDA faction recently suggested that this place should now be used as a priority for Ukrainians. But ‘shopping in the group of refugees’ is neither possible nor desirable, reception organization COA responded in Brabants Dagblad†
‘If I see two children who are about to die, I won’t look where they come from’
It is painful for Syrians in the Netherlands that there is so much more solidarity now that the Russian bombs are not falling on Aleppo, but on Mariupol. ‘I think it’s nice for Ukrainian refugees that people are now saying: come and join us,’ says Diana Al Mouhamad (24), a journalism student who fled from Syria to the Netherlands in 2016. ‘At the same time, I think: there are still Syrian people who have been in asylum seekers’ centers for a long time, they are not taken in. I understand that Ukraine is closer. Still, if I see two kids about to die, I’m not going to look where they’re from or what color they are to decide who I’m going to help first?’
Al Mouhamad published an opinion piece in the Leeuwarder Courant, where she is doing an internship, about the racism she sees in the coverage of Ukraine. Some examples: a politician on the BBC said he was very emotional now that ‘European people with blue eyes and blond hair’ are being murdered; a CBS correspondent expressed his surprise that the bombs are now hitting a ‘relatively civilized, relatively European’ area; a columnist for the British newspaper The Telegraph found the whole situation so shocking because ‘they look like us’. “People watch Netflix and use Instagram, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers.”
According to Al Mouhamad, it is incomprehensible that journalists express themselves in this way. “While their job is to tell the truth, to be objective and not to discriminate.”
‘There is a difference here between how it is and how it should be’
It’s a human fact that we feel ‘more empathy for people we think are similar to us,’ says Christian Keysers. As professor of neuroscience at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, he studies human empathy. ‘It is known from research that white people feel more empathy with other white people, just as black people feel it more strongly with other black people.’ Discrimination is evolutionarily ingrained, you could say. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s good,’ says Keysers. “But there’s a difference here between how it is and how it should be.”
Because our resources and time are limited, according to Keysers we make a choice in who we help. “Evolutionarily, we’re programmed to be the first to help the people who carry our genes: our children, our brothers and sisters. The next circle to whom you give help are the people in your own social group. Within that, we are often generous, because an unwritten law says we get that help back when we need it. When you help outside your own group, there is not that reciprocity. So there is no evolutionary interest in that. In the animal world, species that mainly focus on their own group and are stingy towards the outside world have the best chances of survival.’
According to Keysers, if reports emphasize that victims resemble ‘people like us’, this increases the willingness to help. In that sense, descriptions of people who also Instagram could actually increase empathy.
The point is that Syrians or Afghans are less often reported that way. And then, according to Keysers, it is easier for the brain to come up with ‘tricks’ to escape human feelings. ‘For example, by ignoring certain information, so that you do not become empathically involved. Or by reinterpreting information, for example with the idea that refugees themselves are to blame for their situation.’
“I wouldn’t stress so much that this is an example of racism”
The fact that the current willingness to help is being used as an illustration of racist thinking is something some people don’t like. “The last thing the commendable volunteers who now take care of people around the clock deserve to be called racist names,” columnist Nausicaa Marbe recently wrote in The Telegraph†
Professor Keysers therefore prefers to turn it around. “I wouldn’t stress so much that this is an example of racism. You could also say: we are now showing how cordial our society can be. The aid to Ukrainians shows how powerfully empathy influences our actions. The downside is that it also shows that this empathy was not experienced so strongly before.’
The efforts of the Syrian Alalloush at the Open Embassy helpdesk are no less than that. “The Ukrainians have not chosen to leave their country at once,” he says. “It’s not their fault at all.”
He discusses the practical questions they can expect at the helpdesk with the Ukrainian Elena Volokhova. How do you get a Dutch SIM card? Where do you arrange health insurance? Someone even asked Volokhova where you can get your dog vaccinated against rabies. She is happy that she can do something for her compatriots, because she sometimes feels quite powerless.
She herself has taken in two Ukrainians. Alalloush hopes this wave of hospitality will set an example for the future. Ukrainians do not have to integrate and will be allowed to work temporarily without a permit from April. The first Ukrainian children were already in a school class last week. It will now appear that this approach works better than keeping refugees waiting for years in an asylum seekers’ center, Alalloush thinks. ‘If you can participate right away, you learn the language faster and you feel at home faster.’