Myanmar Junta cancels publishing house's license for selling forbidden book

Yangon/Myanmar: A publishing house in Myanmar's licence got revoked by the junta for selling a popular military book that features the nation's brutal crackdown on the Rohingya minority, Agence France-Presse reported, citing state media.

The military junta revoked the licence of Lwin Oo publishing house after it put "Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide" by Irish-Australian academic Ronan Lee online sales. The author's website states that the book explores Rohingya history and identity and documents the historical marginalisation and abuses against the community.

It sourced Rohingya testimony and historical research and has been lauded by foreign commentators on Myanmar and the Rohingya.

The state-backed Myanma Alinn newspaper said that the publishing house violated the publishing and printing law by putting the book on sale, which can cause "racial and cultural violence between ethnic groups." It added that Lwin Oo's license got withdrawn on May 28.

A large number of Rohingya Muslims had fled the country, which has a Buddhist majority, after the military crackdown in 2017. Reports of distressing reports of murder, rape and arson also surfaced along with the Rohingya exodus.

In March this year, the United States declared that violence against the minority amounted to genocide since there was solid evidence suggesting the same.

There are nearly 900,000 fled Rohingya living in the world's largest refugee camp

in Bangladesh, next to Myanmar. Another 600,000 Rohingya estimated to be still in Myanmar were branded as encroachers and were denied citizenship, rights and access to services. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing had dismissed the term Rohingya as imaginary.

Under a previous junta, all books, newspapers and magazines were required to be submitted to a government censor for vetting before publication.