Rangoon – The Burmese censor board has abruptly censored 'melamine free' advertisements for food items in weekly journals. As such the journals had to ink over the printed ads in this week's issues.
After the melamine scandal rocked China where some children died in September this year, foodstuff companies advertised their products as 'melamine free' in the domestic weekly journals. But the censor board stopped these ads from being published at short notice this week.
"We found the censorship in Sunday and today's issues too. The 'melamine free' texts were inked over. In the 'Flower News' journal a full page ad was found inked over, "a reader told Mizzima.
But readers could manage to read the text that was inked as the censorship had to be done hurriedly, he said.
"The censor board had passed these ads so that the journals could print them. Then the board reverted its previous decision and ordered the publishers to ink the ads," a magazine editor who is close to the media fraternity said.
A condensed milk marketing executive expressed his concern over the loss of customer confidence on their products because of the censorship.
"We are relying on the customers' confidence on our products. Since the melamine scandal, the market has been sluggish. Then we have to acquire melamine free' recommendation from 'Food and Drug Administration' and use them as ads in the media at a huge cost. With the censored ads, the market will be affected more as customers' will lose their confidence on our products," he elaborated.
An ad manager from a weekly journal said, 'We had an uncalled for quarrel with our customers. Some journals published early carrying the ads and we had to ink them over after receiving orders from the censor board. Our customers didn't know the situation and we had to explain to them".
Another journal editor talked about the inconsistencies of the censor board's policies and guidelines and their flip-flop.
"The policy and regulation of the censor board is inconsistent. They passed these ads in previous issues even in daily newspapers. Then they changed their mind and censored these ads this week. This is what the censor board policy is like. They change their mind easily and frequently at short notice", he said.
