Afghanistan: Taliban shuts women-run radio station for playing music during holy month of Ramzan
Six of the eight employees in the radio station were females. Moezuddin Ahmadi, the provincial director for information and culture, said that the radio station repeatedly broke Islamic Emirate laws and regulations by playing music during Ramadan. As a result, the station was shut down.
In another repressive move, a radio station run by women in northeastern Afghanistan has been shut down for playing music during the fasting month of Ramadan, Al Jazeera reported on Monday.
The radio station, Sadai Banowan was the only female operated station in Afghanistan, which broadcast for ten years. Sadai Banovan is translated in Dari as “the voice of women”. Of the eight employees of the radio station, six were women.
Moizzuddin Ahmadi, provincial director of information and culture, said the radio station repeatedly violated the Islamic emirate’s laws and regulations by playing music during Ramadan. As a result, the station was closed.
Ahmadi said, “If this radio station accepts the policy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and guarantees that it will not repeat such a thing again, we will allow it to operate again,” Al Jazeera reported.
The station’s manager, Nazia Sorosh, denied Taliban allegations that the radio station had broken laws and regulations, denying that any violations had taken place and claiming that the shutdown was an elaborate plot.
According to Al Jazeera, the Taliban “told us that you broadcast music. We haven’t broadcast any kind of music.”
Afghanistan is currently facing a severe humanitarian crisis as the country now has the highest number of people with emergency food insecurity in the world, according to international assessments.
In addition, the human rights situation in Afghanistan has worsened since the fall of the Afghan government and the return of the Taliban to power in August last year.
Although fighting in the country has ended, serious human rights violations continue unabated, especially against women and minorities. As Khama Press reports, women and girls in Afghanistan are facing a human rights crisis, deprived of their fundamental rights of non-discrimination, education, work, public participation and health.
Soon after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, many journalists lost their jobs. Local Afghan journalists who disobeyed Taliban rules have been detained.
According to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association, media organizations shut down due to lack of funding or their staff members leaving the country.
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