On October 3, 2012 in the Igor Haidai’s Studio, Europe without Barriers hold the exhibition – presentation of art and advocacy project “Visa?” What’s the Reason?”. In such a creative manner Europe without Barriers presented inside and outside look of the problem of the freedom of movement in the Eastern part of Europe. The presentation has been accompanied by a public discussion about the borders, visas and freedom of movement. During the discussion the experts, media, civic activists tried to find out a way to overcome these artificially created barriers between people.
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Oleksandr Sushko, leading expert of Europe without Barriers stressed out that apart from being creative this project has also its political and civic importance as it presents Ukrainian citizens which in terms of exercising their right of freedom of movement are in worse conditions than citizens of the other part of Europe.
The exhibition, as it was pointed out by Mr. Sushko is based on personal stories of well-known Ukrainains, who were refused a visa, as well as those who faced difficulties in obtaining permission to enter the EU today. Thus, from Mr. Sushko view it could be stated that current regulatory framework of migration flows considerably hampers freedom of movement of law-complying citizens. Meanwhile legislation does not create any particular problems to those who want to get in to the EU countries illegally. The project aimed to highlight the fact that not only “ordinary people” fall under the category of law complying citizens, but also famous Ukrainians. Becoming situation is counter-productive for both sides, as also Europe is deprived of the possibility to “communicate with these people” – added Mr. Sushko.
Besides that, it should be considered that Ukraine is one of the most opened countries, as it is the only country of the OSCE having granted a visa-free regime to almost all the OSCE participating countries apart of Turkmenistan. However, these liberal regulations of short-term stay are compensated by not enough liberal rules of long-term stay. That’s why it would be not fair to create an “one-sidedness illusion”, according to which Ukrainians are discriminated. Instead, it would be fair enough to present Ukraine as an open country with law-complying citizens and promote establishment of the larger expert and civic society in Europe, which will support the abolishment of visa regime with Ukraine.
The representatives of Europe without Barriers are convinced that the above mentioned aim could be achieved in the mid-term prospective. For these purposes the photo exhibition is planned to be shown in the EU countries. The idea lies in finding an alternative ways of raising awareness of the problem – Mr. Sushko added.
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Igor Haidai, famous photo artist, emphasized the importance of the photo exhibition to be presented to the European Union ordinary people. Mr. Haidai developed the accent that usually citizens of the EU don’t even suspect the existence in Ukraine of problems with obtaining visas to the EU countries.
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Iryna Sushko, Head of Civic Initiative Europe without Barriers, underlined the fact that all participants of the photo project actively support the idea of removing the artificial barriers in people’s movement throughout the whole Europe. In Ms. Sushko opinion among all photo heroes particular place occupies Myroslav Marynovych, who wrote an open letter and boycotted Schengen trips for one year. As Ms. Sushko stressed – “this story showed us that we still need to gain our natural right to move freely as also remind us that we do have our dignity, which should not be humiliated by consular officers”. Talking about the photo project, Ms. Sushko mentioned that project’s art underpinning is the idea of black and white photos, symbolically reminding us the exciting of white and black Schengen lists.
The date of the exhibition also appeared to be symbolic – the event took place on October 3, Day of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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