Unknown intruders broke into the empty offices of an Armenian newspaper and caused havoc there on early on Thursday in what its editor denounced as an attempt to bully her and her staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an attempt to obstruct our professional activities,\u201d said Knar Manukian, the editor of the \u201cZhoghovurd\u201d daily. \u201cThe criminal or criminals checked all of our drawers, caused disorder but did not take away anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy office room \u2026 is a complete mess,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cAll boxes were opened. I don\u2019t know what they looked for or whether they found anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Manukian\u2019s words, the intruders did not steal computers or cash kept in one of the office drawers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they looked for information but they did so in a way which primarily carried a warning,\u201d said Taguhi Tovmasian, the newspaper\u2019s founder who is currently a parliament deputy representing the ruling My Step alliance.<\/p>\n
Tovmasian suggested that the intruders sent the \u201cZhoghovurd\u201d staff a message to the effect that \u201cwe can enter the editorial officers and take any information from it whenever we want.\u201d The overnight break-in therefore constitutes a serious threat to press freedom in Armenia, she told reporters.<\/p>\n
Tovmasian and Manukian spoke shortly after police inspected the \u201cZhoghovurd\u201d offices in Yerevan and assessed the damage caused to it. The police did not immediately make any statements on the intrusion strongly condemned by Armenia\u2019s media freedom and opposition groups.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred just days after Manukian was again questioned by the Special Investigative Service (SIS) in connection with leaked testimonies by ex-President Serzh Sarkisian and other former officials interrogated over the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan.<\/p>\n
\u201cZhoghovurd,\u201d which also runs the Armlur.am news website, obtained those testimonies and published excerpts from them early this year, prompting SIS claims that the revelations are illegal. Manukian accused the law-enforcement agency at the time of pressuring her publication.<\/p>\n
The newspaper editor revealed on Thursday that immediately after her latest interrogation she complained to Armenia\u2019s human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, about the \u201cviolation of my rights\u201d by the SIS and \u201casked him for protection.\u201d She did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
Manukian also claimed that on \u201cnumerous\u201d occasions law-enforcement authorities have demanded that \u201cZhoghovurd\u201d disclose sources of its articles containing details of various investigations conducted by them. She said she therefore suspects that the break-in may have been an \u201cillegal search\u201d conducted by them.<\/p>\n
Tovmasian did not rule out such a possibility. \u201cThis can be one of the theories,\u201d said the former journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manukian also claimed that on \u201cnumerous\u201d occasions law-enforcement authorities have demanded that \u201cZhoghovurd\u201d disclose sources of its articles containing details of various investigations conducted by them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66041],"tags":[76448,76449],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}