1 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Taliban fundamentalist movement has shut down one of the last remaining operational women-run radio stations in north-east Afghanistan after discovering that it was broadcasting music in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan.
Radio Sadai Banuwan (Women’s Voice Radio) was the only station run by women in Badakhsan province and will remain closed for an unspecified period of time, according to the provincial director of the Taliban Department of Culture and Information, Muezudin Ahmadi.
The director of the station, Najia Sorosh, has assured the Afghan chain Tolo that the music was broadcast by mistake and that it was actually a naat, a poetic song in honor of the Prophet Muhammad. The staff was made up of eight people, most of them women, and the station had been active for ten years.
The Taliban, on the other hand, reproached that those responsible for the station had already received prior warnings, “but the women did not pay any attention, so we decided to close the radio station,” added the Taliban provincial information officer, Hekmatullah Mohamadi, also.
Local Badakhsan journalists have called on the Taliban to reconsider their decision, a new blow to women’s job performance, increasingly restricted since the fundamentalists returned to power in August 2021.
