Billboards featuring women reappear in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: Despite Taliban threats for women to not appear on billboards, multinational companies have begun replacing men’s photos on advertising billboards in the provincial metropolis with those of women.

In the beginning of the Awami National Party (ANP)-led government multinational companies have started replacing men’s photos with women on billboards but due to growing Taliban activities the companies after two to three months replaced women photos with men. The Taliban and some Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) activists, whose influence is still growing in the province, considered the depiction of unveiled women to be un-Islamic and had been issuing threats that those who failed to stop this practice would face sever consequences.

Companies have now installed new billboards carrying the photos of female models on University Road, Peshawar Press Club Road and Surai Pul near the NWFP Assembly building.

Cinemas around the city have also begun displaying billboards and posters carrying photos of actresses. They had been barred from displaying movie posters by the former MMA government. He said the MMA-led regime had caused an irreparable loss to the Pashtun culture, adding that it had closed the doors of a state-run theatre during its five-year tenure.

The city’s only state-run theatre Nishar Hall closed its doors long ago to singers, dancers, and musicians, who were also barred from holding public concerts because the former ruling religious alliance in the NWFP considered this to be un-Islamic.

Shabab-e-Milli, a Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated hardliner group, headed by Sabir Hussain Awan, a former member of the National Assembly, are thought to have destroyed several billboards, causing millions of rupees of loss to companies in the province.