Disinformation is spreading even at the borders, the situation is changing from hour to hour, says a student helping refugees
“It started when my friend and his older brother decided on the weekend after the outbreak of the war that they wanted to help. They went to the village of Vyšné Nemecké blindly, stayed for the weekend to find their way around and provide the necessary contacts. coordinate everything, I joined them, “said a student at Masaryk University.
As a student, he could not afford to put together material help, but they managed to organize a collection. The mayor of the Brno district, Líšeň Břetislav Štefan (ČSSD), lent them the premises of the town hall, where the selected items were deposited. Warm clothes, blankets, children’s toys, food and other things were chosen. “People carried things there and contributed to our fuel. We then reported everything, how many were collected, how many we drove, how many things we took to the border,” Bastl described.
There was a lack of help at the border. “They lacked people there, people need it as much as possible. The Slovak government claimed that there are a lot of volunteers on site. But volunteers sometimes need to rest, sleep. It’s not just about bringing material help and taking away refugees, but also moving We brought a heap of sleeping bags to a local school, where children and teachers were sorted instead of physical education, and then in the evening we went to the border, where our friend Honza went to register that we had 14 places in Brno and we went back with the refugees, “he said.
According to Bastl, the situation at the border is changing from hour to hour. The refugees arrive there in waves and sometimes food is needed, other times clothes. But he does not understand why some people in the Czech Republic are surprised that refugees have expensive clothes. “There are exactly the same people in Ukraine as we are, they are not people from the shack. Someone is surprised that when they arrive, they have designer clothes. Are they supposed to wear ragged pants to look like ‘right’ refugees?” Bastl asks.
In addition to the organization, obtaining information is also a problem at the borders. Therefore, information videos were created within the student university media in Brno. “We filmed them because there is disinformation at the border that they have to pay for food and so on,” Bastl said. According to him, finding information is difficult for refugees, so they turn to social networks. “People find out information mainly on the Facebook heads of the given crossings, where there are local coordinators, but publicly all the information is not summarized anywhere,” he added.