Taliban shut women-run Afghan station for taking part in music

A women-run radio station in Afghanistan’s northeast has been shut down for taking part in music through the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official stated Saturday.

Sadai Banowan, which implies girls’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s solely women-run station and began 10 years in the past. It has eight employees, six of them feminine.

Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for Info and Tradition in Badakhshan province, stated the station violated the “legal guidelines and laws of the Islamic Emirate” a number of instances by broadcasting songs and music throughout Ramadan and was shuttered due to the breach.

“If this radio station accepts the coverage of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and offers a assure that it’ll not repeat such a factor once more, we are going to permit it to function once more,” stated Ahmadi.

Station head Najia Sorosh denied there was any violation, saying there was no want for the closure and known as it a conspiracy. The Taliban “instructed us that you’ve got broadcast music. We now have not broadcast any type of music,” she stated.

Sorosh stated at 11:40 a.m. on Thursday representatives from the Ministry of Info and Tradition and the Vice and Advantage Directorate arrived on the station and shut it down. She stated station employees have contacted Vice and Advantage however officers there stated they don’t have any further details about the closing.

Many journalists misplaced their jobs after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Media shops closed over lack of funds or as a result of employees left the nation, in keeping with the Afghan Impartial Journalists Affiliation.

The Taliban have barred girls from most types of employment and training past the sixth grade, together with college. There isn’t any official ban on music. Throughout their earlier rule within the late Nineteen Nineties, the Taliban barred most tv, radio and newspapers within the nation.