KABUL: Afghan Taliban have shut a women-run radio station for playing music during Ramazan.
Sadai Banowan that means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s women-run radio station and started broadcasting 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them Afghan females.
The director Moezuddin Ahmadi for Information and Culture in Badakhshan province said the radio station often violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic Emirate” by broadcasting songs and music during the Holy month of Ramadan and was shuttered because of the breach.
Ahmadi said that “If this station accepts the policy of Afghanistan and gives a guarantee that it willn’t repeat such a thing again, we will allow it to operate again,”
Radio Station head Najia Sorosh rejected there was any violation
Radio Station head Najia Sorosh rejected there was any violation, stating there was no need for the shutdown and called it a conspiracy. The Taliban “told us that you’ve broadcast music. We haven’t broadcast any kind of music,” she said.
Sorosh said that at 11:40 am on Thursday, representatives from the Information and Culture Ministry and the Vice and Virtue Directorate arrived at the radio station and shut it down.
She said radio station staff have contacted the Vice and Virtue Directorate, but Taliban officials there said they don’t have any further information about the closing.
According to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association that several journalists lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Media outlets closed over lack of funds and because their staff left the country.
Local Afghan journalists who refused to comply with the Taliban’s policies have been arrested, with few reporting exploitation and torture after their release.
The Taliban government has barred women and girls from numerous forms of employment and education beyond the sixth grade, also including university. There is no official ban on music.
During the Taliban’s previous rule in the late 1990s, they banned most television, radio and newspapers in the country.
