World News | Taliban shut down Afghan music station run by women

Jalalabad (Afghanistan) April 1 (AP) – A radio station run by a woman in northeastern Afghanistan has been shut down for playing music during Ramadan, a Taliban official said Saturday.

Sadai Banowan, which means female voice in Dari, is the only female-run radio station in Afghanistan, founded 10 years ago. It has eight employees, six of whom are women.

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Moezuddin Ahmadi, director of the Information and Culture Department of Badakhshan province, said the station repeatedly played songs and music during Ramadan, which violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic emirate” and was shut down as a result.

“If the station accepts the policies of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and promises not to repeat the same mistakes, we will allow it to operate again,” Ahmadi said.

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Webmaster Najia Sorosh has denied any violations, saying the shutdown was unnecessary and that it was a conspiracy. The Taliban “told us you played music. We didn’t play any kind of music,” she said.

Representatives from the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Ethics and Ethics Bureau arrived at the station at 11.40am on Thursday and closed it, Sorosh said. She said station staff had contacted Vice and Virtue, but officials there said they had no other information about the closure.

After the Taliban took over in August 2021, many journalists lost their jobs. According to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association, media outlets have closed due to lack of funds or staff leaving the country.

The Taliban prohibit women from most forms of employment and education beyond the sixth grade, including universities. There is no formal music ban. During their previous rule in the late 1990s, the Taliban blocked most of the country’s television, radio and newspapers. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)