Freedom Tuesday is a magazine printed and distributed in the city of Sweida, in order to shed a light on a city marginalized by the regime since its ruling, to cover the revolutionary mobilization of its college students, and of the city in general, and to benefit from students in other cities who had their same experience, such as Aleppo university’s students, by mentioning within their magazine a fragment of their experience.
The somewhat odd name of the magazine was derived from a group called “Freedom For Detainees Tuesday”, and the founders desire of issuing a magazine in the middle of the week, a magazine that gets distributed at night, so people get to discover it in the morning while heading to work, and because they wanted a name far from pretention and formalities.
The idea of the magazine was born when “distributing leaflets was exposing the regime, it was a group idea, incomplete at first and divided between distributing leaflets from time to time, organizing these papers in a magazine, or enlarging the normal size of a publication, and because of this diversion of opinions, our ideas evolved and our perception was completed, especially with the presence of creators who were ready to write in our magazine, we chose multiple caricatures to include with each issue, and a unique vivid yellow color, soon afterwards the first issue was published and distributed on July 2, 2012”.
As for the magazine’s content, it focuses on spreading awareness about human rights, where it published the “Declaration of Human Rights” divided on many issues, in a pursuit of presenting their ideas in a simple and objective mold, that can be accepted by both the supporter and
oppositionist of the regime, but at the same time can clarify the system’s tyranny, and its obsessive control over every aspect of Syrians’ lives.
The magazine started to establish a fan base soon after its first issue was published, as one of the magazine’s team explained, “one of the happiest moments was when we found out that one of our readers really liked the magazine and is looking forward to read our next issue, we experienced many great moments along the way, but still there are many obstacles hindering our cadre’s work, the most important ones are: pressure before the issue is ready, not having enough topics to talk about, and our inability to complete an issue due to a staff shortage, which led to its stoppage later on”.
Freedom Tuesday, as described by one of the activists who contributed in its making is “the closest creative work to the ideas of the Sweida Coordination Committee, and is the result of a long persistence effort to deliver the voice of the street, and fight against the regime’s media campaign to distort the Syrian revolution and its righteous goals”.
