A spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Culture, Khubaib Ghufran on Thursday said the "Barya" and "Noor" TV channels were suspended on Tuesday for failing to abide by "journalistic principles".
Two Afghan television channels have been taken off the airwaves for "violations against Islamic and national values".
A spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Culture, Khubaib Ghufran on Thursday said the "Barya" and "Noor" TV channels were suspended on Tuesday for failing to abide by "journalistic principles".
"They had programmes creating confusion among the public and their owners are abroad," he told AFP.
"The media violation commission suspended their operations."
He said "their owners have even taken stands as opponents" of the Taliban government and "until their owners come here, and answer the questions posed to them, their operations will be suspended".
Taliban authorities have been cracking down on media freedom since their return to power in 2021.
In 2022, the Taliban authorities ordered all national and international Non-Governmental Organisations to stop their women employees from working.
They said the ban followed complaints about their dress code.
The order came less than a week after Taliban authorities prohibited women from attending universities, sparking international outrage and protests in some Afghan cities.
According to Barron’s, the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC) said in a statement Afghanistan's media commission had repeatedly warned "Barya" for airing remarks by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a once-powerful warlord and former prime minister, about the Taliban government.
"Noor" had received warnings because it broadcast music and the uncovered faces of female presenters, the AFJC said.
The "Barya" channel is owned by Hekmatyar's son Habiburrahman Hekmatyar.
"Barya had religious and national values in mind, not Taliban values," Habiburrahman Hekmatyar, who lives in exile and whose father has increasingly found himself at odds with Taliban authorities, said on the social media platform X.
"The only thing you won't see from us is silence," he said.
The "Noor" channel is owned by Salahuddin Rabbani, who also lives in exile and served as Afghanistan's foreign minister under the former US-backed government from 2015 to 2019.
His father, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was president of Afghanistan in the 1990s but fled the country as the Taliban surged to power for the first time and ruled from 1996 to 2001.
Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated in 2011 by a bomber, posing as a Taliban peace envoy, with explosives packed in his turban.