I am writing to you from the besieged town of Daraya.

They call our town the school of the peaceful uprising. But right now our people are beginning to starve and some are resorting to eating grass to survive. We have been under brutal siege by Assad’s regime for over three years.

Yesterday the UN announced that it has the regime’s permission to deliver aid to besieged areas, but Daraya was not on the list. We have not received any aid for over 1,000 days.

We were promised a month ago by the United States and the UN that it would only be a matter of days before convoys of food and medicine would enter. But still there has been nothing.

We are being punished for daring to rise up peacefully for our freedom and dignity. There are no extremists like Isis here or Nusra. Those defending our neighbourhoods are all locals, protecting the streets from a government that has tortured, gassed and bombed us and our families.

What scares the regime is the strength and legitimacy of our community. Our democratically-elected council is a threat to Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship.

We respect all international agreements that have been made on Syria. But we cannot enforce them. That is why we are calling on you, friends around the world, to push the UN, United States and other key countries to uphold these agreements and deliver food and medicine to our town immediately.

Please send a message to key negotiators on humanitarian aid, demanding they keep their promises and break the siege on Daraya.

Thank you for standing with us,

Ibrahim
Member of the Local Council of Daraya

Read more - Daraya: the town that shames the world