New Delhi – Delays in the Burmese censorship board has forced a Monthly Publication in Rangoon , Cherry Magazine, to defer its August issue to September, sources said.
While the August issue of Cherry magazine was scheduled to be published in late July, due to the delays by the censorship board, where all publications in Burma has to pass through before being allowed to publish, the magazine was release on Tuesday as September issue, deferring the issue for August.
Despite of the delays, the Censor Board only passed only five poems out of the submission of 16 poems for scrutiny, a Rangoon based editor of a Magazine, who regularly reads and monitors the issues of Magazine publications, said.
Usually, the editor, who wished not to be named said, the censor board takes a week for scrutinizing the contents of magazines. But this time, they took two weeks to pass four poems out of 16 submitted.
"Normally the magazine carries seven poems in each issue, so the editors submitted more poems but by the time the censors pass, the regular publication date of 20th of every month had passed," editor who is close to 'Cherry' magazine told Mizzima.
He added that the Magazine editors changed the issue month and published it on Tuesday.
"This was an anniversary special issue. But the censor board deleted many articles and in some articles, they censored some paragraphs. Each article has about 20 pages. There are many paragraphs deleted from many other articles," he added.
The Burmese Press Scrutiny Board (Censor Board), however, reasoned that the delay in passing the manuscripts was due to lack of manpower in its department since the chief scrutiny officer is on leave and other junior officials have to read many publications and it was more than they could handle this month.
The editor, however, said it was a false excuse by the censorship board, and that the government has tightened the censor rules on 'Cherry' Magazine following a poem – "Depayinga' published in its last month's issue that created trouble among the censorship department.
"No, this is just an excuse. They tightened the censorship rule on 'Cherry' magazine after the 'Deparinga' poem appeared in the last issue. All other magazines are receiving in normal times as usual," the editor added.
In Burma, monthly magazine publishers usually submit a lot more of articles then they actually print to cope with the tight censorship and to have enough articles and poems to print even if the censorship deletes or removes a few of them.
According to the Rangoon literary community, every month, the censorship would delete or remove several articles and poems.
'Cherry' magazine was first published in August 1984 and the August issue is the Magazine's 24th anniversary special issue. Though they could publish their special issue today, the publisher suffered financial loss for the delay in publishing as they lost contact with their readers for a brief period.
