A non-profit expert group has said evidence points to the use of a “sonic cannon” by authorities during protests in Serbia at the weekend.
On Monday, Serbian opposition group Go-Change wrote to the UN, the Council of Europe, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), calling for an independent investigation into the alleged use of such a device against protesters in Belgrade on Saturday.
Go-Change said protesters at the demonstration, believed to be the largest in the country’s history, were subjected to “a device that, when not used for communication purposes, constitutes a means of coercion with potentially serious health consequences.”
Serbia has been gripped by months of student-led demonstrations following the death of 15 people when a railway station roof collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad in November.
Earshot, a London-based NGO specializing in “sonic investigations for communities affected by corporate, state, and environmental injustice,” wrote on the X platform on Monday that its findings supported Go-Change's claims.
Earshot said it had analyzed 12 videos of the event, of which four contained “sound consistent with the noise produced by a Vortex Ring Gun or Vortex Cannon.”
The organization explained that these are non-lethal weapons that force gas through a cylinder at a speed of 185 miles per hour, creating a “howling noise which has been compared to a jet engine” and also cause electromagnetic interference in devices such as hearing aids. It said this was consistent with reports from people present at the event.
It added that if the sound was indeed produced by a vortex cannon, it would have been about 700 meters away from the scenes in the videos, at which distance a shrill whistling would be audible—a sound that could cause “mass panic.”
Earshot called on anybody with further evidence to come forward to aid the investigation.
