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Afghanistan:
Stones thrown after woman singer
In a short documentary video about music and 'community censorship' in Afghanistan, the 19-year-old Afghan singer Mariam says she gets verbal abuse all the time as well as stones thrown at her in the street.
Even though Mariam is regularly insulted and attacked, and her family wants to stop her singing, she refuses to give up.
“The music scene is now one of the main battlegrounds for the soul of Afghanistan,” says the narrator of the video which had been viewed 10,000 times on YouTube.com in July 2008.
“A woman singing in Afghanistan is like committing suicide,” a successful Afghan artist who lives in Germany is quoted as saying.
According to the film’s producer, Michael Healy, 19-year-old Mariam was the first female singer to perform in public in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The video clip is entitled ‘Afghanistan – Mariam's Song’ and durates six minutes and 40 seconds.
Among others, the video also contains interviews with member of parliament Mawlawi Ataullah, and the music teacher Sohrab Ahmed
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