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First Satirical Paper In Syria In Nearly 40 Years Hits Out At Americans
DAMASCUS, Feb 26 (News Agencies) - The first satirical newspaper to appear in Syria for 38 years is holding back from poking fun at leading Syrian figures but has gone to town on Americans.
In its first issue Monday, the weekly Addomari rolls back time to cite the Monica Lewinsky affair, seeking to catch up for missed coverage. A cartoon shows former U.S. president Bill Clinton holding a cigar between fingers, sketched as a pair of legs with particularly shapely buttocks.
But there is not a single cartoon of any Syrian official in the paper, 50,000 copies of which were printed and sold in kiosks for 25 pounds ($0.50).
The owner, Ali Farzate, who is also the cartoonist and editor of the paper, said that was because Syrian publishing law forbids poking fun at people.
Addomari, meaning "the lantern bearer" in Arabic, does however relate tit-bits about local celebrities, such as television presenter Wafa al-Assad who insists on pronouncing the Hungarian capital "Abu Dapest" instead of Budapest, "as if she was talking about the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, and not that of Hungary."
Addomari devotes much of its 20 pages to the economic crisis facing the country.
"Syrian, what are you eating? How are you living, and what are you doing Thursday evening [the start of the Muslim weekend]?" the paper asks rhetorically.
It answers its own question with the "five commandments: don't eat bread, don't drink water, don't go to the cinema [anyway there aren't any in our country], don't get sick and don't buy new clothes."
In its horoscope column, it tells Taureans they will get an advance on their salaries, and urges them to let that be widely known to enable them to get into debt more easily.
The paper delivers a local scoop to celebrate its launch by announcing a government reshuffle for the beginning of March, confirming a rumor circulating for some three months.
The tone is far freer that that of the government press, or the ruling Baath party. There are many more classified ads, and the paper was quickly sold out in many kiosks.
Farzate, 49, says in an editorial that he got the go-ahead to publish thanks to President Bashar al-Assad who visited an exhibition of his cartoons seven years ago, when Bashar finished his medical studies.
At the time, the cartoonist was displaying cartoons banned in Syrian and other Arab papers he worked for, and Bashar, then 28-years-old, criticized that ban.
"I was happy to hear him say that nothing justified the ban and to stress the importance of satire in cartoons and writing to build a solid and healthy society," Farzate wrote.
His is the first satirical paper to be allowed in Syria since the Baath party took power in 1963. Before that, there was a satirical paper called al-Modhek al-Mubki ("To make you laugh and cry").
Along with Addomari, the Baath party has given the green light for papers to be published by other parties in the Nationalist Progressive Front (NPF) coalition, which contains six other political groups.
Two NPF parties, one communist and one Nasserite, have so far published papers in the wake of that decision.
In the meantime, the Syrian government struck back last week against a budding reform movement hatched in Damascus after Bashar's ascension to power last July.
Bashar, the son of Syria's late strongman Hafez al-Assad, has tolerated greater political freedom in a country long known for the iron fist of the Baath regime.
Bashar, an eye doctor by training, has approved privately organized political salons, the opening of non-Baath party newspapers, freed several hundred prisoners, closed a notorious jail on the outskirts of Damascus and broadened Syrians' access to the Internet.
But the limits of tolerance for greater political freedom were revealed. The Baath-dominated parliament has authorized the judiciary to question Riad Seif, the country's leading opposition MP, who hosts the most celebrated of the freewheeling political salons.
Seif said Parliament Speaker Abdel Qader Qaddura had agreed to "a judicial complaint accusing me of harming the constitution."
Tightening the vise, authorities have in recent days told the organizers of the growing number of political salons that they need official permission to operate.
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