PESHAWAR, Jan 20: The owners of video shops here have begun winding up their business after an aggressive campaign launched by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government against vulgarity, video shop-owners told Dawn on Monday.

“We cannot tolerate this situation any longer. The police conduct raids on our shops and take away whatever they lay their hands on. They confiscate even the normal stuff from us,” said a video shop-owner in the Shaheen Town area. An announcement has been pasted on the front door of his shop which reads: “This shop is for sale.”

According to him, during the last two months he had surrendered video and audio cassettes and CDs to the police worth Rs6,000.

The police on the directives of the MMA government have burnt thousands of cassettes and CDs, confiscated from about 400 video shops in the city in the past two months. These cassettes and CDs, the police argued, contained objectionable movies and songs, which the government considered unIslamic.

The NWFP Chief Minister, Akram Khan Durrani, in his maiden speech after taking the oath, banned the sale of CDs and cassettes, contained vulgar movies or songs. Since then, the police have been working overtime to confiscate the CDs and cassettes from the shops and set them alight in public.

Interestingly, some of the press photographers, who succeeded in salvaging some cassettes and CDs from being burnt, maintained that not all the CDs and cassettes contained objectionable movies.

“It’s nothing but a ploy to force us to close our businesses. The police even confiscate the cassettes of Pakistani films and dramas,” said a cassette dealer in Saddar Bazaar.

According to him, it was incorrect that the shopkeepers were destroying these items voluntarily as claimed by the police.

Another video cassette dealer alleged that the police were making money in the drive against obscenity and vulgarity. “A police inspector offered me 500 cassettes and CDs on nominal price which he had seized from a dealer, but I refused, because I have already closed down my shop and planning to start fruit business,” said Amjad Khan, who ran a shop in Qissakhawani Bazaar from the last seven years.

The cassette dealers said they had already suffered a great deal at the hands of cable television network. The government has failed to prevent cable operators from screening the Indian movies, which were banned one year ago. Moreover, the PTV is no exception, given the way it aired its dramas and music programmes. The radio transmission, specially of FM101, was also considered unIslamic by the government standard, as it plays pop music.

“There is a ban on playing music in buses and hotels, but the drivers and hotel owners defied the ban at their will and no action is taken against them,” said an office-bearer of the video shopkeepers association.

He said it was the responsibility of the police to check the indecent and immoral practices by the video shop-owners and the government would do well it stops harassing the innocent people, because it would render some 10,000 people attached with this trade jobless.