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Interrogating Sound

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Sonic torture is a method of interrogation that utilizes music or sound to target a detainee’s psyche through mental exhaustion, humiliation, and/or sensory overload. Described as “torture-lite” and deemed to be more ethical than physical brutality, the no-touch torture method of sonic torture does not involve any direct physical contact against detainee that leaves visual marks after the interrogation. Numerous accounts of sonic torture have surfaced in the past years; detainees recount blasting music playing for hours on end or in short bursts during their incarceration. 

A 2008 Associated Press report writes how repetitive music was used to "to create fear, disorient . . . and prolong capture shock" at Guantanamo Bay, as well as detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report further details that the music, which played at the volume of a jackhammer for hours on end, resulted in prisoners screaming, self-harming, and experiencing suicidal thoughts. 

Another account from Saddam Saleh Aboud, a man held in Abu Ghraib, recalls to the New York Times how he was strapped-down, naked and forced to listen to blasting music for 23 hours straight. 

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Binyam Mohamed, recalls his experiences in the CIA-run "Dark Prison" in Afghanistan: "It was pitch black no lights on in all the rooms for most of the time…They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My writes and hands had gone numb… There was loud music, [Eminem's] "Slim Shady" and Dr. Dre for 20 days… [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. [At one point, I was] chained to the rails for a fortnight … The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night… Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off."

In the wake of 9/11, as photos of the torture centers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have become widely circulated, there has been an increasing trend of public denouncement of these interrogation practices by activists and politicians. The outcry against these practices has focused on the treatment of prisoners that result in physical pain, most notably waterboarding.

 

However, in the discourse around these brutalities, psychological torture or no-touch torture often falls by the wayside. In particular, the practices of sonic torture have been repeatedly covered up and effectively silenced. Despite the obvious brutality of these practices, sonic torture is continually minimized and justified in mainstream discourses.

The minimization of sonic torture is not only invalidating to those who have been subjected to these methods but also justifies the harmful practices of the US military as humane and rational, resulting in the continual expansion of US colonial and militarized violence abroad. The motivation for this project has been to highlight these harms and to inspire further mobilization to stop sonic torture, and torture at large.  

Below are a few guidelines for further research and action towards the abolishment of these inhumane practices.

Ideas for further action:

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Readings:

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