Jenny Keesden
speaker
114 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jenny Keesden’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If you look at Amapiseria, Euphrates is kind of in the middle at the top. And that is... The region, roughly, where this offensive that we spoke about of the Turkish-funded militias, which has come from the west across to the east, at times closer and further away from the river and currently a few kilometres away, that's where that offensive has been stopped by the SDF.
and cannot progress any further, despite intensive air support from Turkey. And they're sort of increasingly putting pressure on that, but it hasn't got anywhere. But it's close, right? You know, it's not too far away and people are following the news.
And what's right on the other side, if you get across the river there, there's the dam and then there's a bridge further to the north, the Kerakozak Bridge, that's similarly kind of crucial. And if you get across the river, you're not far away at all from the city of Kobani. which I'm sure most of your lessons will have heard of, is this massively important symbol of anti-fascist resistance.
It was one of the ignition points of the revolution for the social movement here, and it was really important in the fight against ISIS. And I think it's safe to say that Turkey via the SNA had its eye on Kobani again, and that this is in fact an attack on Kobani, which has been kind of held back. And so the dam is important symbolically as this like strategic river crossing.
It's this kind of no pass around, like they will not pass moment. It's also important logistically, like for the society here, because it's a hydroelectric facility. It supplies electricity, helps with the supply of water for various reasons for thousands and thousands of people. It's now out of action.
It might go without saying, but when you're in the middle of an active war zone, you can't keep running a place like that. So that is directly attacking and impacting the society and normal communities here. And so, yeah, it's no wonder that those normal communities and that society always feel very, very implicated and are kind of ready to... to stand up and defend themselves.
It's not as... Yeah, the military assault is not kept separate from the society here. The society is also under attack. Yeah. Indirectly. Attacks on infrastructure such as that, and directly by, like, drone strikes on many, many civilian targets, unfortunately. Yeah.
In recent times, that has increased, particularly in villages surrounding Bani, and we've seen, like, kids also hospitalised and killed as a part of that. So on the 8th of January...
What began was that what they call a convoy, like a big truck of different vehicles, got together and arranged and organized from different towns across northern Syria to go to Kishin Dam as this very big symbol, this very clear, important physical location and also very symbolic thing where war has also been fought before.
There's also in previous campaigns against ISIS, for example, there was fighting in the region. So People feel like, you know, their sons and daughters have fought for this river crossing before. It's still, you know, it's there in the historical memory as well.
And people went and since then, which is almost exactly two months, as we're recording this, we're right around the two months anniversary month. And there's been a constant presence there, a protest on the dam. And that's got several different kind of aspects to it. It is mostly to raise the voices and raise awareness and make visible what's happening.
And yeah, if it's hard to understand why like hundreds of people would go from their homes to somewhere that is closer to the active fighting to somewhere that's in a very unstable region, like, Yeah, first of all, you have to understand that nowhere in north of East Syria is actually safe. Right.
Like, in Kamaz of the city where I am, there's been residential buildings, bombs dropped on them from drones, like, within the last couple of months as well. It's not like... Yeah. And there's this, yeah, sense of safety wherever you are.
The difference is a sense of doing something about it and of standing together and coming together in these, like, amazingly brave and amazingly creative ways that only the communities of North East Syria can manage. So...
Yes, unfortunately, during these two months, there have consistently been airstrikes on the dam, and I don't have the exact statistics, and you wouldn't necessarily get an honest answer about how many of them have come directly from Turkey and how many have come from SNA drones.
But the SNA drones are paid for by the Turkish state anyway, so at the end of the day... Yeah, morally, how much difference does it make?
And they have attacked the civil protests there, and up until now, I believe 25 civilians have been killed, and many more than that hospitalised. But despite this, and in the shadow of this, with the most beautiful defiance, that protest has continued. And what the videos that maybe don't get shared as much, or shared enough that people might not have seen, are also all these images
you know, which are very, I can attest are very real because I went there myself a few weeks ago, which is everybody getting out and dancing at the slightest opportunity or slightest excuse or lack of an excuse. And the most amazing art that's been made, like paintings of the people who've been killed or as I would say here, fallen martyr in these two months.
There's been theatre, like theatre performed using the bits of the bombed out cars that were bombed just a few days before as props to kind of like tell the story of what's been happening. Like the most like creative things, also statements for the press.
all your different organizations show up so like the organized youth show up as the youth and obviously the women's organizations as women saying like you know this is our revolution this is our community and we know what it looks like when it gets occupied we're not just going to stand by and see it happen again it's our land it's our water and it's our kids is the refrain that kind of gets repeated over and over again and of course they're there in solidarity as well with the with the SDF themselves with the military force it would be it would be crazy if they weren't yeah
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