Week's suspension of 7 Days News journal for reporting murders

By Nam Davies
Mizzima News
17 March 2008

New Delhi: Using its draconian laws the Burmese Censor Board under the Ministry of Information suspended the publication of '7 Days News' journal for reporting the multiple murders in Green Bank, Kamayut Township, Rangoon.

The Rangoon based '7 Days News' weekly journal reported the multiple murders in its 13th March issue with the headline 'Four souls taking order to find culprits'. It was made to suspend publication for a week, a source close to Journal told Mizzima.

The March 19 issue of the journal has been banned and will not be distributed to the market.

"They banned Wednesday's issue. This issue reported the funeral ceremony and what the police said besides having news photographs of the coffins. As far as we know, the censor board didn't allow both the news headline and the news photo, and ordered the editors to remove these. But we heard that the journal reported them as supplementary news," an editor of a weekly journal said on condition of anonymity.

Similarly the editors of 'The Voice' weekly journal published every Saturday were summoned to the censor board office and ordered to sign the pledge. The weekly journal also reported the news of the killing of five persons with news photographs.

"The editors of 'The Voice' journal were summoned and interrogated about the news photograph and ordered to sign on the bond. The news photograph of security personnel and police forces deployed at the crime scene appeared with the news report. They had to just sign on the pledge. That's all," the editor added.

"But we learnt that no action was taken against other weekly journals, like 'Weekly Eleven' and Flowers 'News Journal'. They too reported the multiple murders as it appeared in the state-run media," he added.

On March 3, four family members and a housemaid at a residence under tight security, near to the home of Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, were shot dead in broad daylight.

Businessman Charlie (Saw Kyipha), aged 60, and his wife San San Myint, 58, along with their two daughters, Mya Sanda, 36, and Hnin Pwint Aye, 27, and their housemaid Alphaw, 15, were all shot in the head inside the residence at No.126 Seinlaekanthar Street, Kamaryut Township.

The culprit, or culprits, is still at large and a police source says cash totaling at least $90,000 was missing from the victim's home.