Translator: Ivan Stamenković Reviewer: Senzos Osijek
Thinking about how it all started
and the beginnings of what brought me here today,
I realised it happened because of my biggest fault:
I never plan anything in my life.
I am walking chaos
which my husband Luka is trying to put in some sort of order.
So, this was the chaos,
and this is my husband Luka.
There are moments in life when you need to make plans,
just as at one point we had to start planning in Are You Syrious,
or we would have fallen apart.
But there are times, and this was one,
when you have to react immediately from the heart.
What is there to think about when you need to feed the hungry,
put clothes on their back, give them information,
and, most importantly, love.
What prompted me to start doing something
was when in mid-August last year
my father suggested we host a Syrian family
in a vacant property we had.
I started asking around, but got no reply.
Everyone was just writing sad posts, posting sad statuses,
but no one was taking any action.
At that time, the route did not pass through Croatia,
but I couldn't bear to watch what was happening.
I told Luka we had to do something,
we couldn't just sit and watch what was going on around us.
I posted on Facebook that we were collecting donations in our garage
and a few days later, our garage was full of donations
and they were spilling over into our flat.
People we had never seen before started arriving,
and our friends spent hours in front of our garage,
sorting and packing clothes for the field.
I often say "we"
because none of this would have happened
if it had not been for us: Luka, myself,
and all the wonderful people who decided to do something just as we had done.
I borrowed our first van from my company,
filled it with donations
and set out with my dear friend Selma.
Our first encounter with refugees was at the Serbian-Hungarian border
where we met thousands of people in a field
with no electricity, water,
or any official organised help
and with only a handful of volunteers to help them.
The scene was truly horrendous.
We did what we could to help, but it amounted to almost nothing.
On the way back, we stopped at a gas staton
and looking in the direction of the forest near the motorway,
we saw a family of eight, with a baby in their arms,
frantically running around.
We approached them and asked if we could help.
They said a man had taken 1500 Euros
to take them from Szeged to Budapest,
which is a distance of around 170 kilometres.
He told them to hide in the bushes while he was at the gas station,
but he didn't come back.
Our logical reaction was to tell them to get in
and we would take them to Budapest,
where they could take a train to Austria.
Five minutes after we set out,
there was a deathly silence.
We were terrified that they had suffocated.
But they were so exhausted, they had fallen asleep.
The lovely little baby, Rahaf, had also fallen asleep.
That was certainly the longest 100 kilometres in my life.
We reached a place outside Budapest
and stopped at a hotel because they just wanted to rest,
but as soon as they saw us they threw us out,
shouting they didn't want any refugees.
Along the way, we met other families
sitting outdoors drinking tea
because they were not allowed inside the restaurant
to drink their tea there
even though they had paid for it just as we had done.
We managed somehow to reach Budapest, avoiding the police.
This is the tarpaulin they hid under.
We reached the train station and got them on the train.
That was when I realised we could do more to help.
It was a feeling I simply couldn't ignore.
The trigger that marked the transformation from a single action
into a movement we called "Are You Syrious?"
It was a humanitarian concert
which we organised, as it happened,
on the day that Hungary closed its borders.
We got a call from the wonderful Denis Katanec
who said he wanted to sing, and that there were others who wanted to help.
In only ten days, Luka organised a concert
and Vid Jeraj gave it its name.
Everyone who worked on the concert:
the people receiving donations,
the security personnel, cloakroom attendants,
sound technicians, musicians, they were all volunteers,
and some of them are still in Are You Syrious?
We realised this had outgrown our garage
and started organising shifts for receiving and sorting donations.
The next day I called the Red Cross and the Centre for Peace Studies
to offer our help
but they obviously didn't take me seriously.
That was the first time I said I was from Are You Syrious?
What was Are You Syrious?
I had unconsciously given a name to an action,
an idea, an organisation, a movement.
Two days after the concert,
I loaded food into the car
and drove to Tovarnik
because at that point the route had shifted to Croatia.
I arrived in Tovarnik, said, "Hello," to the policemen
and at that point, the four thousand people
who were standing nearby surrounded by police
broke through the cordon and started running towards us.
A policeman turned to me and said,
"Madam, they'll devour you, but we will help you."
They made a circle around the car
and helped me distribute food and beverages.
The let me bring more.
What I saw then,
I saw throughout the refugee crisis in Croatia:
The police showed that they were not just officers,
but also human beings.
There was still no organised official help in Tovarnik
and it became clear to me we had to organise a serious campaign.
I went to Luka and said, "You have to go to the field!
They need serious help there and only you can do it."
He put a post on Facebook, gathered a team,
and they were there in a jiffy.
Bapska, a village on the Croatian-Serbian border,
has a special place in the story of Are You Syrious?
This was the first place we had a serious presence on the ground
where our volunteers stayed in shifts, 24/7, for almost a month.
At that time all the refugees passing through Croatia
passed through Bapska on their way to the official camp in Opatovac.
We are talking about 5,000 - 7,000 people a day,
whom the volunteers clothed, fed,
comforted, and provided with much-needed information.
The volunteers slept in the field, all in one tent,
and some did not sleep for days on end.
They worked 48-hour shifts without stopping.
Bapska taught us much about the stories of the refugees and their truth,
much about ourselves and about what was needed.
We became convinced we could do everything others were doing, if not more.
That was when individual volunteers
from Croatia and abroad started joining us.
Then it went on - camps and especially informal border crossings
through which hundreds of thousands of people were passing: Mohovo, Bregana,
Šentilj, Ključ Brdovečki/Rigonce, Dobova, Hamica...
Amid this chaos our 15-year-old son packed a bag and went to the field.
He went to the Serbian-Croatian border on his own
and came back so ill, he ended up in hospital.
But this didn't stop him and when he got out,
he spent his nights in the field, even though he had school in the morning.
It seemed quite normal to see my husband come home in the middle of the night
with a batch of razor wire in his hand, the next morning go with him to a festival
we had organised to collect donations.
We were crazy enough to gain access to no man's land
where no one else had gone before us.
After a week, we had to leave, but the situation there improved
which showed us that sometimes
it's enough to be there for things to change.
For months after this, hard-working AYS volunteers
were busy cleaning the camp in Dobova
where the conditions were unfit for the people arriving there
who were often rejected.
We patrolled the roads and followed buses
because the authorities often transported refugees
to informal border crossings where no help was available.
In mid-winter, people were arriving in flip-flops,
children without socks or only in socks,
babies in just bodysuits, and worse.
We learned that in the field you can't plan anything
You make a plan and two hours later, it's useless.
Field work has to be guerrilla work and it doesn't bear plans
but requires flexible and resourceful people
for whom nothing is too hard.
Who if you call them in the middle of the night,
in winter, and say help is needed, get up, get dressed,
go to the nearest open store,
buy 100 kg of bananas or whatever else is needed,
and go to the field.
When you're doing something like this,
you realize that what is happening in reality
and what is presented in the media are two completely different stories.
Does the general public know why there were initially more men than women?
Probably not.
Because the man of the family went ahead on this difficult journey
so that when he was granted asylum,
he would have the right to bring his family over to safety.
And another reason was that in the chaos in Syria they didn't see who to fight for,
for which of the world powers playing games with the fate of their country.
In parallel with all this work in the field,
I was going through a real drama coordinating all this.
Luka was spending more and more time in the field,
my life was getting more chaotic with three children and my job
which I couldn't keep up with,
and I am grateful to my partners for being so understanding.
I slept for only a few hours a day, never in one stretch
as there was no difference between day and night.
We realised that the only possible response to this situation
was a 360° approach.
You can't go to the field if you have nothing to distribute,
and you can't distribute things if you don't know to whom, what, and where.
These are our warehouses.
We changed warehouses and we got them all for free.
We drove donated vans, and bought only what we had to.
We received a donation of 1,000 pairs of shoes
from a Croatian entrepreneur.
The shoes were quite dressy,
not something you'd wear for walking through muddy fields,
but the refugees wore them with a big smile
because they were much better than the flip-flops they had arrived in.
In this period I was probably getting on the volunteers' nerves
because I kept badgering them to send me information.
Our dear volunteer Vlasta once said to me, "You're a pain in the butt.
Stop bothering me, I don't have time for all this in the field."
But I didn't give up on gathering and sharing information,
and all this time we continued networking, which later proved to be very important.
Luka and I had terrible rows.
He would say to me, "Who do you think you are? What do you imagine you can do?"
"We can't go on living like this."
After those two months, I told you about,
he said, "OK, sit down and tell me the things you're doing
and I'll write it all down."
The result was 26 people, a minimum of 26 people in the coordination team
for everything to function 24/7.
These are some of the groups we set up, which are still with us today.
I advertised and I will never forget the people who responded
when we were at breaking point and I was deciding whether to go on or give up;
give up because I would collapse, which actually happened.
I had a minor stroke but I am all right now, as you can see.
I would like to mention all the people who responded to my call: Asja, Magda,
Milena, Emir, Petar, Zvone,
the Jasnas, the Sanjas, Krešo...
I'll probably forget someone, but they know very well who they are,
because they hold a special place in the story of Are You Syrious?
But all the volunteers who came later
also contributed to the evolving story of Are You Syrious? and where we are now.
My gathering and sharing of information finally came into its own
when Milka arrived with her team and developed it to perfection.
The Daiy Digest grew into the now famous Are You Syrious Daily News Digest
the only uncensored daily news covering the refugee route from Syria to Norway
which is quoted by well-known world media such as the Washington Post, the BBC,
Le Monde, and many others,
and is read by refugees, volunteers, and everyone on the route
because they consider it the only reliable source of information.
Along with the volunteers in the field, who perform the so-called "sexy" jobs,
a great strength of AYS are the people working in dark warehouses,
doing night shifts at their computers
gathering and sharing information which will be of use to others.
Imagine what it's like when a message arrives in the inbox
saying that smugglers are holding refugees hostage
or that a boat full of people is sinking and they need urgent help.
Imagine the stress volunteers face every day in their lives.
But they don't give up. They go on.
And when all the people are saved, imagine the joy of the whole AYS family.
However much we plan, we have had some unforeseeable situations.
For example when Luka, after one of those rows when he said we couldn't go on
came home one evening with Samuel from Nigeria,
who hadn't been allowed across the Slovenian border
because he was black.
Samuel is still with us, a little more than a year later.
He has become part of our family. Our children adore him.
Samuel plays soccer and is desperate to stay in Croatia,
which he has come to love with all his big, naive, childlike heart.
Sadly, this state does not want Samuel, but we are still fighting to keep him.
Samuel is not the only one.
Right now there are almost 1,000 people in Croatia
who, like a million others, come from war-torn areas of the world
seeking international protection.
Did you know that the full name of Are You Syrious
is Zemljani (Earthlings) - Are You Syrious?
As earthlings we wanted to show what it is we believe in and what we're fighting for,
which is life without borders and false divisions
because all of us are just ordinary, commonplace, wonderful,
insignificant, magnificent people.
From early September last year to today
AYS volunteers have helped in many countries on the refugee route.
We have gained the confidence of people everywhere in the world.
We've had donors and volunteers from all over the world.
We've delivered tons of aid to various countries on the refugee route.
We've organised humanitarian drives, concerts, created a brand.
We've been supported by many artists who organised humanitarian events
on their own initiative in order to help us.
We rebuilt a camp in Syria which was destroyed by shelling
which houses mostly women, children, and the elderly
who lack even the means to cross the border.
AYS volunteers help asylum seekers to integrate.
We left our comfort zone and got to know people from all parts of the world
with different occupations and life stories,
but the most important experience was being united around an idea
and being able to value and embrace someone completely, totally different.
They told us we were neglecting our children,
that this was no way to live,
but our children have experienced what they wouldn't have in a million years
living in this insular and conservative society.
Each volunteer brought something of their own into this story
There are now about 50 volunteers working in the organization.
We see what we are doing as supremely patriotic,
because we are presenting our country as a country of good people
which it was before it became a land of "great warriors."
It used to be a land of good people and good hosts who help those in trouble.
We once got a message saying their people would remember what we did for them
for as long as their children were alive.
What we did and what we are doing, and what we feel while we are doing it,
that's what it means to be Syrious.
To be Syrious means to help, with the will and without fear, anyone who needs help,
whether it be refugees in a park, in a field, or in a camp,
asylum seekers or people not seeking asylum and everyone passing through.
We'll go on for as long as we are needed,
and our main goal is not to be needed any more and to cease to exist.
Looking back on everything I've told you about today
I don't think I've done anything spectacular,
anything that any one of us couldn't do
if we only make the decision and have the courage to carry it through.
This is proven by all the AYS volunteers
to whom I send hugs, and to all volunteers and refugees, displaced people,
migrants, people without a home, without freedom, without peace.
Earthlings, let's be Syrious!
(Applause)