Egypt shuts down belly dancing TV station

Egypt’s vice police on Thursday arrested the owner of a belly dancing TV station on suspicion of operating without a license, inciting licentiousness and facilitating prostitution, a security official said.

Egypt’s vice police on Thursday arrested the owner of a belly dancing TV station on suspicion of operating without a license, inciting licentiousness and facilitating prostitution, a security official said.

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The station, ElTet, broadcasts videos 24 hours a day of scantily clad belly dancers giving sultry performances to live in-studio music. Available on satellite TV for more than a year, the station has gained a dedicated following, in part because it shows a quintessentially Egyptian art form that has grown increasingly inaccessible for many people in the country, having been largely relegated to expensive clubs and hotels as the country has grown more conservative in recent few decades.

Still, mothers and grandmothers traditionally teach young girls belly dancing at home, particularly by watching old black-and-white movies that made earlier generations of belly dancers household names in Egypt.

Early Thursday, Egyptian vice police raided an apartment in central Cairo where the station’s owner, Baligh Hamdy, had been running the operations and recording most of the videos, the security official said.