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By: Agence France-Presse August 4, 2012 6:26 PM

InterAksyon.com The online news portal of TV5

YANGON - Dozens of journalists marched in Myanmar's main city Saturday to protest the suspension of two journals amid fears officials are rowing back on pledges to ease strict junta-era censorship laws, an AFP reporter said.

The Voice Weekly and The Envoy were suspended last week for failing to submit stories for pre-publication scrutiny, the chief censor told AFP Saturday, adding the "temporary suspension" may last for a fortnight.

The reporters, many wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Stop Killing (the) Press" in Burmese and English marched to several sites across Yangon, including the two publishing houses behind the suspended weeklies.

Stifling censorship was one of the key symbols of junta-led Myanmar, where even seemingly innocuous details were scrubbed from public discussion and publications were frequently pulled for comments deemed damaging to the authoritarian rulers.

The government had recently taken a lighter touch on some of the less controversial publications as part of reforms sweeping the former army-ruled nation, prompting some editors to test the boundaries of the newfound freedoms.

In June Tint Swe, head of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department (PSRD), told AFP there "will be no press scrutiny job" from the end of that month, also insisting there will "be no monitoring" of local journals and magazines.

A petition by the newly-formed press freedom committee called for an end to all "oppressive" media laws.

"We have seven demands which we are sending in a letter to the president to remove the oppressive laws covering the media," Zaw Thet Htwe, a spokesman for the independent committee told AFP on phone.

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Myanmar journalists protest vs censorship, march on streets