Time to waive Ukraine visas

Sir, – I returned earlier last week from a thoroughly enjoyable British Esperanto Congress in Conwy in North Wales.

One of the pleasures and, indeed, the unique privilege of speaking Esperanto is the opportunity to converse with people of diverse nationalities and linguistic backgrounds on a one-toone basis as equals.

No interpreters are needed.

No one has the advantage of using their own native tongue.

And nobody has to struggle with a national language as fiendishly difficult as English.

Among the linguistic backgrounds represented were Italian, Hungarian, and French.

One woman, Nina Pietuchowska, was, in 2018, the main speaker at our own Scottish Esperanto Congress – which, incidentally, will be taking place this year in the City Hotel in Dunfermline during the last weekend of May.

My joy at seeing Nina again was diminished somewhat when she told me about the struggles faced by Ukrainian refugees in her home town of Byalistok in eastern Poland.

She spoke with evident anger about the authorities requiring people who have fled for their lives, and have been separated from family members, to fill in forms and provide details which are only available on documents they abandoned in their flattened homes.

I felt embarrassed telling her that, while these people were at least already in a safe country, the government of the UK insists, illegally, that refugees fill in the forms before they get to our border.

I fully support the principled call by the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, at the start of this crisis that the UK should throw visas requirements aside and deal with the paperwork later – as Poland and the rest of the EU are doing now.

This week we will be voting in the council elections.

While the issues at local level may not seem as important nor as farreaching as those at a national level, we should nevertheless consider the morality of the parties the candidates represent.

We have the opportunity today to send a clear message to those with a conscience vacuum in Westminster about the kind of country that Scotland is.

Hugh Reid.

Grange Park, Dunfermline.