Sonic Violence
Besides situations of forced or “ostensible” listening, that I have described earlier, there are situations of forced listening, speaking, chanting, and singing in spaces of incarceration. While in dreams from Zamirouskaya’s collection Belarusians confessed their true thoughts about the regime, in reality people are forced to confess crimes they didn’t commit and admit intentions they didn’t have. Telegram and YouTube channels owned by or associated with the enforcement agencies and the state media like SB – Belarus Segodnya [Belarus Today] are full of “confession” or “repentance” videos (признательные, покаяльные видео) showing people forced to self-incriminate under duress. Naša Niva media proposed to avoid using the term “repentant or confession videos”, because these confessions are forced, and the videos are filmed and edited in a way that distorts and manipulates the detainees’ words (Naša Niva 2022c).
Before 2020, such videos were mostly associated with Kadyrov’s regime in Chechnya, but then became an extremely popular media-terror method used by Belarusian special services and selected state journalists (like Lyudmila Gladkaya or Ryhor Azaronak) who were allowed to participate in unlawful interrogations (Viasna 2022b). Most of the detained people in these videos look confused and scared, and some have traces of beating. Those who were later freed, tell that officers made them self-incriminate, often forcing them to read a prepared text from a paper. Many were not only verbally abused and threatened, but beaten and tortured with electric devices, plastic bags wrapped around their heads, etc.
The Belarusian law prohibits publishing recordings of interrogations before the guilt is proven and, according to Article 27 of the Constitution, “no person shall be compelled to be a witness against oneself, members of one's family or next of kin. Evidence obtained in violation of the law shall have no legal force.” Paradoxically, in Belarus, where freedom of speech is severely limited, in fact you have no “right to remain silent” like in Hollywood movies. In reality, it is extremely difficult to withstand threats and tortures and remain silent.
According to witnesses and recordings, soundscapes of milicyja vans, departments, yards of temporary detainment isolators, prison corridors, and cells were full of sounds of people being beaten. Swearing, shouting, and moaning elevated the fear level and psychological suffering. All night long rumbling and shrieks were heard:
“Put your snout down, scum!” Shouts, moans, baton strikes, shrieks did not stop.This was such a peculiar sound. Sometimes there was a moan after each strike,sometimes only strikes [were heard], the person was already unconscious but was still beaten. (Kołb 2020)
There is already an extensive literature on sound and music used in interrogations, tortures, and executions by Greek (Papaeti 2013a, 2013b), Chilean (Chornik 2013, 2018), Portuguese (Duarte 2015), and Syrian (Ristani 2020) dictatorships torturing and “re-educating” members of the opposition, and by CIA officers torturing the Guantanamo prisoners during the “War on Terror” (Cusick 2008). Particularly horrible are witnesses of the Nazi military using music and forced singing in concentration camps (Naliwajek-Mazurek 2013) and during mass shootings of Jews in Belarus and Ukraine (Birch 2021). These studies also deal with the definition of sonic torture and the fact that psychological and sonic torture is often not mentioned in survivors’ memoirs or during tribunals, being eclipsed by narratives of more physical tortures and humiliation (Grant 2020; Papaeti 2020).
Since the start of the widespread protests and their brutal crushing in summer 2020, various media and human rights initiatives like The International Committee for Investigation of Torture in Belarus. the Viasna NGO (see: Stories of torture of detainees after the 2020 elections), and others have amassed hundreds of detailed accounts by detained, arrested, and imprisoned people who have experienced harsh treatment, violence, and tortures caused by various “law enforcement” agencies.[28] Among these witness accounts are stories about forced listening, speaking, and other types of abuse that can be classified as sonic torture. I have analyzed such publications collected in 2020-2023 to understand the scope, geography, and methods of sonic violence used by the Belarusian enforcers (Niakhayeu 2024). The study shows that forced listening and vocalization are systematically used within the context of politically motivated violence in incarceration and “at liberty”, both by “law enforcement” personnel and by other state representatives all over the country.
This range of sonic violence techniques comprises a continuum and can be classified according to their damaging potential, space and the context in which these techniques are applied, and according to the possibility to escape from this sonic violence. While some of these techniques can be classified either as torture, or as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT), other techniques might seem relatively harmless – like compulsory, ostensible listening to propagandist content or loud “patriotic” music played on the streets. Nevertheless, these techniques are gradations of a sonic violence continuum; they also can have lasting effects and can easily transform into more damaging techniques, for example, by increasing the loudness or duration of the sounds, or by restricting the affected persons’ freedom to escape the uncomfortable or violent situation (Niakhayeu 2024).
According to former prisoners, Belarusian enforcers exposed them to noise, shouting, and loud radio music, also at night: “From Christmas to New Year [there was] a ‘disco’ [aired] from a dedicated speaker specially for one cell. Maybe to make the effect stronger, they turned off the radios in the neighboring cells” (Salidarnaść 2021). Some witnesses mention that two different radio-channels could play at the same time in a cell (Naša Niva 2020b). Others note that officers obviously enjoyed abusing and beating people: “The isolator guards drank at night, turned the music on, and then went around the cells abusing the detained — the females verbally, the males physically” (Sysoĭ 2022). “When they brought people after the Sunday [protest] actions, [the officers] were rapping while riding on their backs in the corridor” (Viasna 2020b).
Birch considers forced speaking or singing under violence to be among the most destructive experiences for a person’s identity, as at the moment of violence the individual’s voice is weaponized and “transformed into an instrument of oppression” (Birch 2021: 175). By forcing a detainee to chant praises to Lukashenka, to riot squads (“Glory to OMON!”)[29] or to sing the state anthem, officers not only subjugate the detainees but alienate them from their own voices. A man beaten in August 2020 remembers:
They forced everyone to sing the anthem. If one sang bad, didn’t know the words, mixed them up as me (as I remember only the Soviet variant of the anthem), or sang not too enthusiastically, then we got struck with clubs. There was a businessman from Russia lying nearby, he didn’t know our anthem at all, and he got a lot too [...] Then the OMON officers came back and “respite" ended. We had to shout “we wish you health, Comrade Chief”[30], “I love OMON” and to sing the anthem. (August 2020 2020b)
A cousin of a Belarusian volunteer-soldier who died fighting for Ukraine, was arrested after milicyja officers accidentally heard his ringtone – a Ukrainian patriotic song. GUBOPiK[31] officers took him to their headquarters in Minsk, beaten him in a room with Russian flags on the walls, and forced him to confess on camera.
On our way to the milicyja department [the GUBOPiK officers] forced me to sing the national anthem, but I don’t know it. [...] For them the “red rags” are insulting Lukashenka, not knowing the anthem, and having patriotic tattoos. Then they said: “We are the police, and now we’re transferring you to the normal milicyja. (Naša Niva (2022a)
This phrase about “the police” is quite revealing. Another detainee, anarchist Mikalai Dziadok, told the court that GUBOPiK officers called their building “Gestapo”. Belarusian children learn about the Gestapo and collaborationist auxiliary police through films and books about WWII and associate them with utter cruelty toward partisans, anti-fascists or any civilian suspected of helping the resistance.
In 2020-2023 forced singing of the state anthem (which, according to the Article 19 of the Constitution is one of the state symbols) became one of the favorite humiliating methods used by the enforcers. In August 2020, people were forced to sing the anthem while they were beaten right in police vans, immediately after their detainment or in isolators’ courtyards. People were also forced to sing it during recordings of “confession videos”, as an everyday routine, in exchange for a piece of soap or as a condition to be freed. Singing the anthem became a key part of a symbolic and violent ritual of “political conversion.”
Prisoners considered by personnel to be “rule-breakers” were put in SHIZO[32] – isolation cells with the strictest regime, where conditions were hardly bearable even for healthy and mentally stable individuals. In 2021, political prisoner Vitold Ašurak died in such a cell at the Škłoŭ penal colony after being exhausted, deprived of sleep, and probably beaten. There are “radio-points”[33] in the Škłoŭ SHIZO, that broadcast the national anthem, colony rules, and an explanation of the strict regime in such cells: “Staying in a SHIZO cell should cause a certain level and set of psychological and moral suffering in order to change his behavior towards a more law-abiding one” (Motolko Help 2022). According to a former prisoner:
[I]t is required not only [to listen to the] anthem, and not only in SHIZO cells, [but also] to conduct morning physical exercises following the commands [of] audio-recordings [broadcast via] radio-points or speakers in the colony’s residential zone. Prisoners must follow the radio-point commands: ‘In the morning and in the evening one must stand in front of the door and sing the anthem. There’s a print-out of the [anthem] text on the door.’ (Motolko Help 2022)
Speaking of the state anthem and the fact that few people know its text,[34] I should mention that for a long time (1991-2002) the Belarusian anthem was a “song without words”, played back or performed as instrumental music only. It was the same as the anthem of the BSSR written in 1955, and its current text was adopted only in 2002 by reworking the old BSSR variant. For example, the first lines
We, Belarusians with brotherly Russia have been seeking together a path to happiness
were changed to:
We, Belarusians are peaceful people. Our hearts are devoted to our native land.
This declaration of peacefulness was made void by “brotherly” Russia that invaded and bombarded Ukraine from the Belarusian territory in February 2022. According to its Constitution, Belarus was a neutral state at the moment of the invasion and missile strikes from its southern regions. Even the new edition of the Constitution, adopted after a rigged referendum held on 27 February 2022, “excludes military aggression from its territory towards other countries”, which means that Lukashenka and his military staff have violated the highest law of the state.
