Residents read newspaper at a roadside stall
© AFP/File Khin Maung Win

YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar's press scrutiny board issued the ban earlier in the week during a meeting with a group of private publishers, said the editor of a weekly journal, who declined to be named.

"We were told not to accept advertisements in any other languages expect Burmese and English," he said.

"Of course, this restriction came because of the ad in the Myanmar Times last week," he said.

Danish artists ran an ad in the weekly Myanmar Times on July 23 that contained a hidden message calling for freedom in the military-run country and branding Myanmar's top ruler, Senior General Than Shwe, "a killer."

The half-page ad with a sun and a palm tree was purportedly promoting tourism in Myanmar for Scandinavian holidaymakers, and contained a poem extolling the pleasures of travel.

But the first letter in each line of the poem spelled the word "freedom," while the name of the supposed travel agency, Ewhsnahtrellik, is "Killer Than Shwe" spelled backwards.

Than Shwe heads Myanmar's junta, the latest in a succession of military governments that have ruled the country formerly known as Burma since 1962.

The global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has called Myanmar a "paradise for censors" and places the country among the world's most restrictive for press freedoms.

The Danish artists, Pia Bertelsen and Jan Egesborg, form a group called Surrend that has pulled similar tricks in Iran and the former Yugoslavia to prove that even autocrats can be criticised.

©AFP