Cambodia police seize new paper about Myanmar

PHNOM PENH, May 19, 2008 (AFP) - Cambodian police on Monday confiscated thesecond issue of what officials said was an unlicensed newspaper aboutMyanmar being unlawfully distributed inside another daily.The Burma Daily, which first hit newsstands Friday, was appearing inside theCambodia Daily -- whose publisher said the material about Myanmar was merelya supplement, and not a separate publication."They cannot publish it like this. They must get permission," InformationMinister Khieu Kanharith said. He said he had warned the paper last weekthat it needed approval before publishing."We're confiscating all copies of the Burma Daily wherever they have beendistributed," Touch Naruth, the police chief of the Cambodian capital PhnomPenh, told AFP.Publisher Bernard Krisher vowed to keep publishing the paper about Burma,now known as Myanmar, and insisted that it was only a supplement to theCambodia Daily. Both appear in English."I suspect that this action was taken at the request of the Burmesegovernment," Krisher said.Cambodia now has several English-language papers and a number of glossy newsmagazines, as well as a large and lively Cambodian-language press.