The forcibly displaced people from the town of Darayya in rural Damascus held a sit-in protest in Idlib province to mark the second anniversary of their displacement at the hands of the Assad regime forces and the Iranian terrorist militias with the support of the Russian air force.
Participants in the sit-in held banners with drawings of the green buses by which they were transferred to Idlib province with the United Nations logo on top of the drawings. The banners denoted the UN responsibility for the displacement of Darayya residents as it failed to stop the military campaign against the town or help the local population stay in their homes.
In addition to the sit-in protest, activists launched a media campaign on social media sites condemning the Assad regime’s mass forced displacement and the crimes against people of Darayya.
Activists also condemned the Assad regime’s terrorist practices against civilians as they called on the international community to hold accountable Bashar al-Assad and all war criminals who were involved in the bombing of cities and towns and in the killing of civilians and torturing them to death.
The town of Darayya was subjected to four-year crippling siege by the Assad regime coinciding with the failure of the United Nations and international relief organizations to relieve civilians trapped inside or lift the siege imposed on them.
In August 2016, the Assad regime launched a large-scale military campaign against Darayya with Russian aerial support, using internationally banned weapons such as napalm, the white phosphorus and cluster bombs. The campaign ended with the mass forced displacement of residents of the town.
The Syrian Coalition said that the emptying of Darayya of its residents was part of the Assad regime’s policy of mass forced displacement which is aimed at changing the demographic landscape in Syria with the help of the Iranian and Hezbollah militias. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)