BROKEN PROMISES: Activists in the pro-opposition town of Moadimiyat a-Sham took to the streets on Friday to call for the freedom of residents incarcerated in government prisons, reported pro-opposition news agency All4Syria.

In the protest, entitled “Their Freedom is Worth More Than Our Truce,” dozens of demonstrators waved banners and signs demanding accountability from the Syrian government.

“My teacher was arrested…I want him in my school,” reads one sign carried by a young boy.

“The regime betrayed the people of Moadimiyat, and has not followed through on its promise to release detainees from prison, a year after [the release of prisoners] was included in the agreement,” an anonymous activist in Moadimiyat told Syria Direct on Sunday, referring to the town’s truce with the regime.

Moadimiyat a-Sham, located 10 kilometers southwest of Damascus, was one of the first towns to be besieged by the Syrian government.

Regime forces conducted the Syrian government’s siege strategy – known as the “submit or starve” campaign – against the town, encircling it entirely so that supplies could not enter and no one could leave.

The starving residents of the town agreed to a truce with the regime in late 2013 to end the blockade, only to have the government continue to withhold humanitarian aid and renege on many of its promises.

A month after the town signed the truce, the snipers returned to target pedestrians and the regime restricted the entry of food, medicine and fuel, the activist said.

“The humanitarian situation in Moadimiyat is still horrible,” she described.

Moadimiyat a-Sham is also well-known as one of the towns hit by the sarin gas attacks that the regime conducted in August 2013.

-February 1, 2015

-Photo courtesy of Moadimiyat a-Sham LCC

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