CARACAS, (Reuters) – A Venezuelan court has ordered  two opposition newspapers not to print violent images and asked  the rest to follow suit, in a move that it said was to protect  children but which critics denounced as censorship.

The ruling followed a scandal over the publication of a  photograph of corpses piled at a morgue in Caracas, which the  government says was part of campaign against President Hugo  Chavez’s Socialist Party ahead of Sept. 26 legislative polls.

The picture was splashed on the front page of El Nacional  newspaper last Friday under a headline about growing insecurity  in the South American country. It was reprinted by another  newspaper, Tal Cual, on Monday.

The city morgue receives many people killed by violence or  in traffic accidents. The newspapers used the image to show the  institution was overwhelmed by the number of bodies.

Yesterday, El Nacional printed a front page without  photos, emblazoned with the word “Censored.”

“(The print media) should abstain from publishing violent,  bloody or grotesque images, whether of crime or not, that in  one way or another threaten the moral and psychological state  of children,” the 12th Tribunal of Caracas said in the ruling  late on Tuesday.

The director of El Nacional, Miguel Henrique Otero, has  defended his paper’s decision to publish the image, which it  says was taken by one of its photographers last December.

He told CNN the government had adopted “a very aggressive  position because the picture had a very big political impact  given the disproportionate growth of crime” in Venezuela.

“The editorial aim of the photo was to shock people so that  in some way they react to the situation, since the government  does nothing,” Otero said.