Newspapers no longer censored in Myanmar

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NAYPYITAW, Myanmar, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Myanmar's 50-year-long practice of censoring local publications came to an end Monday as part of a series of reforms in the country, officials said.

The Ministry of Information announced the move, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"When we started the media reform in June 2011 we intended to abolish press censorship in one year," ministry official Ye Htut said. "During this process we faced some challenges but after 13 months we reached our goal."

Prior to abolishing censorship, Myanmar reporters were required to submit articles to government censors for evaluation before publication and words, sentences and sometimes even whole pages were crossed out, the Journal reported.

Newspapers and magazines now will be able to publish without pre-approval from censors, the ministry said, though they must still submit articles to the government's Press Scrutiny Department to determine if any publishing laws have been broken.