Date: Apr 29, 2011 Source: The Daily Star Syria threatened Al-Jazeera staff: media watchdog DUBAI: Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera said it had suspended some operations in Syria, in a move a media watchdog said was the result of restrictions and attacks on its staff. A spokesman for the network told Reuters the suspended operations were from the channel’s Arabic language service. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the network had told it Damascus had subjected Syrian employees to sustained pressure to resign from the news channel. Authorities also prevented the channel’s correspondents entering the city of Daraa, where a Syrian uprising demanding political freedoms began in mid-March, CPJ said in a statement. CPJ said Syrian authorities had also told Al-Jazeera’s Syria-based staff “not to communicate with the station’s headquarters in Doha, and not to appear on air to present the news from the bureau, even if by telephone,” the statement said. It said that men in civilian clothes had, over the last three days, harassed and intimidated the Damascus bureau and its employees. “Syria believes that by harassing, expelling, and arresting journalists it can prevent the world from seeing the civil unrest gripping the country,” CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program coordinator Mohammad Abdul-Dayem said. “This strategy has already failed in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen. The government in Damascus must immediately stop harassing and threatening all journalists and allow them to work freely.”