About an hour and a half ago, 2-3 men in black suits came to the news agency where I work and told us to leave everything as it is and go home. Someone asked if we should shut off the computers and they said no, not to even shut off any open programs or files. When asked about our personal email, they said, yes, we could log out of our personal email accounts. We gathered our things and stepped out into the hall, after which the owner of the company (who had accompanied the men in suits) locked the door to our office behind us.
One of my colleagues asked a very respectful and what one would consider to be a harmless question to one of the Men in Suits (seeing as the Men in Suits neither presented themselves nor said what was going on); he was responded with a curt and harsh "This isn't a theatre performance. Why are you asking questions?" ("էս թատրոն չի, ինչի ես հարց ու փործ անու՞մ")
One by one, Men in Suits along with the owner of the company went to the other offices and told everyone to leave, locking the doors behind them. I work for an online news agency that is part of a larger media enterprise that publishes a monthly business magazine, a financial print newspaper, a sports news site and a couple of other media outlets. We thought initially the issue was with the specific news site where I work since we publish political news whereas the other departments publish sports, business, and so on... basically, you could say that our department publishes more controversial news.
However, since they kicked us all out, we became confused and suspicious. It's important to note that on this date exactly 10 years ago was the notorious parliament shooting in Armenia. A handful of individuals were able to sneak into the National Assembly (Armenia's parliament) with firearms and proceeded to shoot eight government officials including then-prime minister and parliamentary speaker.
Something tells me that because of this eventful day, national security is on high alert today... However, regarding what happened at work today, it's all speculation until I know for sure. Perhaps we published something that alerted the national guards? Perhaps they're going around to all news agencies and shutting them down today so we don't report anything related to this particular day? I really don't know, but hell if I'm not dying to find out...
So, the next day we were back at work and told everything is "normal." The official explanation is there was a threat of one of our computers being hacked into, but that still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.... I'm not convinced it's the truth, but alas, it's as much of an explanation any of us are going to get.
ReplyDelete"Welcome to the Soviet Union," one of my colleagues said. When I responded by saying that the Soviet Union no longer exists, he just laughed at me. What can you do?
i like how you refer to the as men in suits with capital letters (:
ReplyDeletebut it's so true isn't it? thanks, maral jan, for reading my blog and for posting a comment :)))
ReplyDelete