ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

by Nem Davies | New Delhi – A monthly humour magazine was forced to postpone publishing of its October issue after the censor board cut over 23 per cent of its contents.

The Rangoon based humour magazine 'Pyaw Pyaw Shwin Shwin' had to defer the publishing date of this month's issue as the board censored six forms of a total of 26 forms submitted for clearance.

"They cannot publish in time as the censorship on this month's issue is too heavy. Most of the censored sections are from poems and stories. They are likely to suspend publishing for about two months," a person close to the magazine said. But the magazine refused to release any news regarding the cuts for fear of further action against them.

The censor board, popularly known as 'Literary Kempetai' named after the atrocities committed by the Japanese military intelligence during the Japanese occupation in Burma, did not give any reason for the censorship. But media circles speculated that the authorities censored it as they did not understand what the poems meant. So they simply said that it was not in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the censor board.

"The poems usually use cryptic language so the authorities did not know exactly what they meant. They censored these manuscripts arbitrarily," a veteran magazine editor said.

Similarly many poems from this month's issue of 'Kalyar', 'Cherry', 'Myanmar Thit', 'Mahaythi' and other magazines were also censored so only a few poems appeared in these magazines.

"Many poems were censored this month. Only four poems appeared in this month's issue of 'Kalyar', only five poems were passed by the censor board out of a total of 11 submitted by 'Mahaythi', only two poems appeared in 'Myanmarthit'. Earlier at least seven poems used to appear in these monthly magazines," a writer from one of the magazines said.

In July this year, editor U Htay Aung of 'Cherry' magazine, was forced to resign from his post by the authorities after 'Depayinga' a poem written by Khin Maung Than appeared in the magazine. After this the censor board has imposed tighter restrictions on these magazines.

"A lot of censorship made the magazine difficult to publish and they lost their market as a consequence. The market is shrinking for them now," a veteran magazine editor said.