Sonic Attack on a Silent Vigil

<p>In the aftermath of the alleged sonic attack on protestors engaged in a silent vigil in Belgrade, Serbia, on 15 March 2025, Earshot has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the audio content of 19 videos, conducted 15 in-depth Earwitness interviews with protestors positioned along Kralja Milana Boulevard, and aggregated more than 3,000 written statements from the vigil’s attendees. The findings of this investigation concludes it is highly likely protestors were subjected to a targeted attack using a directional acoustic weapon and contradicts the claims made in a report by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation and Serbian authorities that the ‘disorders’ began with ‘devices’ such as fireworks, and other implications that protestors’ reactions were merely a response to a sound generated by the crowd. This conclusion is based on the following findings:</p> <p>1) Witnesses demonstrated clear analytical capacity during the event: they were able to distinguish between different sounds and assess their surroundings, contradicting claims that the panic was triggered by crowd-generated noise or otherwise explainable acoustic triggers, such as fireworks. </p> <p>2) While the FSB report states that the crowd movement “can only be achieved through coordination by organisers within a crowd and is not possible with a brief use of a special device.”, Earshot’s findings demonstrate how this claim is demonstrably false when reviewing the capacities of the LRAD 450XL in its user manual. This device was known to both be present that night and to be in the possession of the Serbian police.</p> <p>3) A high level of consistency and cross-corroboration was observed across the 15 earwitness interviews and the analysed 3,244 written statements. This consistency enabled the reconstruction of the anomalous sound heard during the vigil. </p> <p>4) The absence of the sound on recorded devices could indicate, rather than disqualify, the use of an LRAD-like device given the specific and patented mechanisms by which it propagates sound from its speaker array. </p>