PEN America is concerned about the Myanmar junta’s ban on 10 books exploring LGBTQ+ themes, accompanied by the targeting of the publishing house responsible for their production.
“This act of censorship underscores the junta’s ongoing efforts to restrict free expression, particularly targeting marginalized voices under the pretext of maintaining ‘stability’ and ‘public morality.’ By banning these works, the authorities suppress meaningful representation of LGBTQ+ stories and identities, perpetuating harmful stigmas. The use of obscenity laws to justify such actions highlights the broader risks of applying subjective and discriminatory standards to limit creative expression. Additionally, taking legal action against a publishing house and revoking their license for alleged obscenity is a disproportionate response that stifles creative expression, chills artistic freedom, and risks being misused as a tool for censorship and discrimination,” said Karin Karlekar, Director of Writers at Risk.
While PEN America recognizes that governments may have a legitimate interest in protecting public welfare and shielding audiences, particularly minors, from explicit content, such regulations must be narrowly defined, applied transparently, and consistent with international human rights standards. Obscenity laws should never be used to stifle dissent, erase cultural or LGBTQ+ representation, or infringe on the fundamental right to freedom of expression.
There has been a history of the junta shutting down publishers who include books on sensitive themes. The junta’s invocation of obscenity laws to justify this ban raises concerns about the use of subjective and discriminatory standards to suppress dialogue and diversity in Myanmar’s cultural landscape. Targeting LGBTQ+ literature does not safeguard public morality—it denies communities the right to see their stories and identities reflected in literature and restricts the space for critical conversations that challenge oppressive norms.Under Myanmar’s restrictive legal framework, writers have long been targeted and detained for spurious national security crimes such as “incitement” and “treason” as a result of their expression. Censorship has been a key feature of previous periods of military rule in Myanmar. PEN America’s December 2021 report “Stolen Freedoms: Creative Expression, Historic Resistance, and the Myanmar Coup” describes how private publishers could only publish a book after it was approved by censors. Following the democratic reforms in 2012, the end of pre-publication censorship ushered in a blossoming of new genres and types of books published in Myanmar. This ended abruptly in February 2021 with the military coup, and now Myanmar ranks ninth in PEN America’s 2023 Index of the world’s worst jailers of writers. More about free expression in Myanmar is available here.