Syria: Addomari published in two empty pages
Syria, Politics, 6/19/2001

The weekly satirical " Addomari" was issued on Sunday with two white and almost empty pages just of two caricatures which implicitly criticize the way their printing was stopped on Saturday, after the Syrian prime minister Muhammad Mustafa Miro and the minister of information Adnan Omran rejected two topics that occupied two pages in the weekly, dealing with the governmental performance and rumors on the government's reshuffle.

The owner of the paper, the Syrian caricaturist Ali Farzat drew in the page 6 of the weekly a bleeding hand while carrying a pen made of pins, while in page no 10 Farzat drew two persons whispering to each other as if they are discussing a matter but in a vacant and empty desert.

Addomari was prevented from publishing after the security forces and the police surprised the director of the al-Qabas private printing house and asked him to halt printing Addomari under the pretext that there is no prior consent from the ministry of information. One of the publication house workers said that the governor of Damascus Ghassan al-Laham talked on the telephone with the director of the printing house and said:" stop printing or I will bother you," while a letter addressed from the printing house to the paper said that the instruction at the beginning came from the minister of information Adnan Omran and then followed by the telephone call from the governor.

Farzat strongly criticized this measure recalling that at a time when Syrian officials criticize Addomari for not being brave enough "such things happen to us."

Earlier, a Syrian official criticized Addomari because it does not " go into depth," saying " we have expected more than that." However, this incident gave a service to the newspaper which sells 100,000 copies per week after Farzat had estimated his loss of halting the printing operation when it had already printed 46,000 copies when it was halted by the police at 500,000 Syrian pounds ( $ 10,000).

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