Cham, The Martyr Channel

Mustafa Hamido

I red an article in Damas post about the paused Cham Satellite channel which has finished its preparation to be launched and still not permitted form that launch. Cham Channel is a mysterious issue added to tens of such mysterious issues needs accurate explanations to persuade us. It is not understood why the Syrian government still forbid Cham to launch. At the end of 2006 (in October) it has been stopped after a month of its broadcasting. In that period, Syrian government claimed that it didn’t have the Authorization to broadcast from Syria and asked its owner to get that Authorization by normal process and refused to give it a permanent one to broadcast till getting the official one. After it got that Authorization, The information minister still refuses to give his permission to broadcast though it is going to broadcast from a duty free Syrian media block. Some people who know the details claim that the minister is waiting another channel which is preparing to broadcast till giving his permission. If we know the owner of that channel, We may know all the Story. The owner as it is propagate is Rami Makhloof , the well known business men and a relative of The president Dr. Bashar Al-assad. I can assume the whole story. It is a kind of a struggle on adverts in the Syrian Market. As the Officials think, it is not accepted from any one to seize the whole cake alone. We should, However , know that the interests at the loan which the owner of Cham has taken form the commercial bank to launch Cham are accumulated and it is unknown if it will be added to the loan or it will be deleted due to the governmental banning of the project to take off. A lot of serious questions may be erupted without real and logical answers from the Authority or who is adopting its view.