Breaking a Siege 

Enforcing a territory under siege is an age old method of war almost as old as civilization. Instead of using brute force to beat one’s enemy, this tactic aims to weaken entire societies until they capitulate. No human can live for months without food and water.

Attempts of breaking sieges and resisting the pressure to submit to an outside rule have an equally long history. Life always finds a way. From tunnels underground to paths over water and through deserts, glaciers, vast forests, mountains and other uninhabitable areas. There are no prisons from where things aren’t smuggled out, or in.

On a large scale, a siege only achieves its goals if the perpetrators can convince others to accept it. Therefore, the aim is not only to control physical access, but the entire narrative and society as a whole. In this way, the breaking of a siege is not only the task of those trapped within its walls but of all who refuse to be silent. Every blockade depends on complicity, every isolation on those who look away. 

The bigger the obstacles in place, the ways around them have to be even more inventive. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, when the government in Egypt cut off all internet access, it seemed impossible to break the information blockade on such an unprecedented scale. Also the nationwide mobile network was down and people could not even call an ambulance or firefighters. It was a small hacker collective, Telecomix, who came up with the idea to mobilise old technology to enable people on the ground to get information on what’s going on out of the country. The mobile phones were useless but the old landlines were still operational. Telecomix convinced a French service provider to supply free connections and started faxing all numbers they could dig up online with instructions on how to use the dial-up connection and connect to the internet. And it broke a siege. 

The battle of narratives has been taken to a new level regarding the genocide in Palestine. In the case of Gaza, Western mainstream and legacy media have failed their responsibility and the principles of journalism. The breaking of the information siege around Gaza should be a priority for every international media outlet. The responsibility of a journalist is to provide accurate information and understanding of what is going on in the world – the truth. But not only has information become a method of war, the Israeli army has systematically killed reporters in unprecedented numbers. The number of journalists killed during the last two years has skyrocketed and that in itself should be a reason for journalists to stand up. 

When a siege is aimed at a population, not on a nation-state, it is difficult to interpret the aims in other ways than as an attempt to annihilate the population through starvation. The inability to stop the genocide has revealed quite clearly the crisis that international institutions and human rights have been pushed into. It is shameful that it comes down to individuals to make a risky journey on barely sea-worthy boats to create enough attention for humanitarian aid, waiting in truckloads just outside the border, to reach a conflict zone where people are being starved to death. 

When presented with the option of sending a journalist to Gaza by ship, we at Turning Point, decided to take part despite the risks. Our journalist and editor Henri Sulku joined the ship Conscience, which carried around 100 medics and media professionals, with the aim of reaching Gaza after a week at sea. He was abducted on international waters and treated with discontent by the Israeli authorities, experiencing the standard protocol for flotilla participants: detention, harrassment, stolen equipment, and deportation. While the mistreatment of international journalists and activists is unacceptable, it pales in comparison to what Palestinian journalists and political prisoners face—indefinite administrative detention, restricted movement, and far harsher practices of torture.

We also find that the flotilla itself is a notable political event worth reporting on. Almost 30,000 people from all over the world applied to join the Global Sumud Flotilla, with around 500 ultimately selected—a testament to the widespread desire to take meaningful action. When was the last time fewer than a thousand people managed to inspire mass protests and major strikes across multiple countries? When did such a small group engage governments to the point of mobilizing Spanish and Italian warships? Moreover, when did a few hundred activists so thoroughly enrage the leadership of a state committing genocide that even ministerial-level officials demeaned themselves by vilifying arrested activists on television? Indeed, when was the last time such a small group of people created so much pressure to stop war crimes?

Faced with the systematic brutality and carnage we have been witnessing in Gaza, those of us on the outside have both struggled to find words for it and, yet, been louder than in a long time. We have also learned that we are not as free as we perhaps thought. The attempts to silence media, academics, and activists across Europe have been unmatched in recent decades—and somewhat successful. 

From the cancellations and sackings of artists, lecturers, and other professionals internationally (especially in the US and Germany) to the terror-listing of anyone using the words “Palestine Action” in the UK, the repression cuts deep into society. It has become forbidden to say out loud what is happening, let alone to do anything about it. Is this another form of siege? Whether it is or not, it is certainly a way to conceal both the truth and our complicity. We in Europe have had to rapidly learn what everyone in struggle already knows: when fascist tendencies reach power, there are real-life consequences for everyone.

During the last weeks, we have also come to ask ourselves: when is a siege actually over? When is it declared finished? When the bombs stop falling? When people have access to the basic goods needed to stay alive? Or is it only when people are free to determine their own lives—not forced to merely survive—and able to organize themselves, their culture, language, and systems?

Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago is famous for his novel Blindness, where the people of a city suddenly lose their eyesight and begin turning on each other in terrifying ways. In the lesser-known sequel, Seeing, the people of the same city go to the ballot boxes on a rainy Sunday to vote in elections. When the results come in, it becomes clear that 83% of voters cast blank ballots, rejecting every leader offered to them.

The authorities in Seeing do not know how to respond to this demonstration of mistrust. The government labels it terrorism and calls in the military to blockade the city’s routes and entries, attempting to isolate the problem. Their solution to an ideological and democratic crisis is a material siege and violence. This fictional example illustrates how both absurd and violent the attempts to maintain an already-lost authority can become.

The fiction mirrors our reality with horrifying precision. The siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996—often forgotten despite happening in the heart of Europe—lasted nearly four years and became the longest siege of a capital in modern warfare. Under constant sniper fire and shelling, the people of Sarajevo created underground schools, makeshift hospitals, and cultural events in basements, demonstrating that even under the most brutal conditions, resistance and life persist.

The siege of Kobane in 2014-2015 presents another harrowing example. Turkey blocked the border to the north, with documented cases of allowing only ISIS fighters to cross. ISIS sieged the city from three remaining directions. The people of Kobane, joined by Kurds from across Kurdistan and the world, fought ISIS alone until the international coalition finally intervened, having no other option.

Similarly, the siege of Shengal (Sinjar) in August 2014 saw ISIS besiege and kidnap thousands of Yazidi women while killing thousands more. The kidnapped women were sold in sex slave markets—arguably a continual, mobile siege of their lives and bodies. Many remain missing today, their siege ongoing even after the physical blockade ended.

After keeping El Fasher under siege for 18 months, Sudan’s paramilitary RSF—with documented massacres in their wake—took control of the city in October 2025 after the Sudanese army capitulated. The RSF is the rehabilitated Janjaweed that carried out massacres against non-Arab populations in Darfur in 2003, now armed by the UAE. Due to the media blackout, those trying to witness events from outside have turned to satellite images. They report that pools of blood and piles of bodies are visible in the photographs—the massacres in Sudan can be seen from space. This present moment simultaneously brings us back to the Middle Ages and forward to a dystopian future straight from science fiction.

Yet, in all these cases—from Sarajevo to Kobane, from Shengal to Gaza and Sudan—people have continued their resistance to all forms of siege by organizing and fighting back.

Faced with these horrifying emergencies, we do not have the answer to the question how we can stop the killing of civilians in Sudan or Gaza. We do not know how to emotionally process seeing it on our screens while staying sane. We do not know if the siege as a tactic of warfare against populations resisting totalitarian rule will grow in the near future; or which new ways of breaking sieges we must find in the times ahead. But what is certain is that we will try to find a way.