Daily News 01/21/2006By [Printer Friendly Version]
KABUL - The Afghan government has fined a privately run television station 1,000 dollars for broadcasting "unIslamic" material, including raunchy clips from Bollywood movies, officials said on Saturday.
A committee within the ministry of information and culture that monitors private television stations ruled against the Afghan TV channel last week, committee secretary Zia Wazir said.
Wazir declined to give details of the offending material, saying only: "They had broadcast stuff that was against Afghan culture and it was unIslamic."
"The channel was fined 50,000 afghanis (1,000 dollars)," he said.
Another ministry official said the channel had been accused of showing footage of half-naked people, including clips from Bollywood movies.
Officials at Afghan TV, one of four privately run stations launched after the fall of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime in late 2001, declined to comment.
Afghanistan's post-Taliban constitution, approved by a council of tribal and religious leaders in 2003, grants freedom of expression but conservative circles within the judiciary often pressure the government to adhere to what they call "Islamic values".