Hi my father Haitham Maleh is a 94 year old lawyer who has spent most of his professional life defending human rights in Syria under both Assad regimes Hafez and Bashar working while living in Syria and he was arrested in 1980 and held in prison without trial till 1986 when he was released. As he witnessed what prisoners under the brutal regime suffered he decided to start a human rights Organisation to work on releasing all political detainees from Syrian prisons. He would travel to the US, Britain, Belgium and Europe and meet with UN Human rights organizations, amnesty international and foreign ministries to put pressure on the Syrian regime to release prisoners. His work became well known internationally and his Organisation know as HRAS became the source of information for amnesty as well as the UN Human rights Organisation. He even helped refugees from other Arab countries who were detained in Syria as they sought refuge in Syria during the unrest in some North African countries and the Syrian regime jailed them and sometimes with their families. My father volunteered all those years and bore all those expenses and paid out his pocket for his travel, utility bills, office rent and whatever he needed to publish. His efforts were finally successful and by 1998 most of the around 25k political prisoners were released by Hafez Assad. However, his work didn’t stop after Bashar took over power in 2000 even though the situation became a bit better for a short period after which the regime started a crack down on opposition again and started arresting people who dared to speak out against their policies and corruption so my father continued to defend those prisoners until he was arrested again in 2009 and then released in March 2011 one week before the revolution started and stayed in Syria until he was threatened with his life and decided to leave in July 2011 and continue to work from outside Syria. Now that Syria has been liberated from the brutal sectarian regime he went back to Damascus to find out that his office was emptied from all files, documents, books and furniture and rented out to someone else. And his house was looted and the looters took every this from carpet to sanitary ware to furniture and kitchen appliances, heating boiler and even windows, doors and light switches. So I figured it is now time that our fellow Syrians can pay him back by supporting him to get his house and office back by donating whatever people afford.
Organizer
