‘To cough was to threat dying’: the artist who mapped Syria’s Sednaya jail with testimonies from its survivors

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‘To cough was to threat dying’: the artist who mapped Syria’s Sednaya jail with testimonies from its survivors

In 2016, I labored with Forensic Structure and Amnesty Worldwide to guide the acoustic a part of the investigation into Sednaya, the Assad regime’s most infamous jail. Because the rebellion towards the regime started in 2011 till the early hours of Sunday, the jail had been inaccessible to journalists and unbiased observers. The recollections of the few individuals who have been launched have been the one assets out there to study after which doc the mass-murder, torture and violation that befell there.

In Sednaya, prisoners’ capability to see something was extremely restricted. From the time detainees have been taken from their properties or pulled out of protests and thrown into cells, they have been blindfolded. Within the cells they have been saved in darkness, made to cowl their eyes and face the wall within the presence of the guards. Over time, they developed an acute sensitivity to sound. My activity, as an artist and audio investigator, was to develop “earwitness” interviews with six survivors of Sednaya, utilizing their sonic recollections to assist reveal the crimes that befell inside.

In addition to darkness, silence was brutally enforced. To talk, cough or audibly transfer was to threat dying. Even when the prisoners have been being crushed they might not make a sound and hundreds of those that couldn’t cease themselves from crying out have been killed. With the survivors I interviewed, I set about utilizing tones, white noise and re-enacted whispers to measure the silence and the deadly strain it exerted.

One description of that silence has stayed with me ever since. Jamal, a witness I interviewed instructed me: “One of many loudest sounds, apart from the horrendous torture noise, was the killing of lice”, the amplitude of which, he mentioned, was equal to “crushing a sesame seed between your thumb and forefinger.” When you’ve got a sesame seed in your kitchen, I implore you to take it now, crush it and picture simply what sort of violent drive it might take to take care of that degree of quiet in a constructing containing hundreds of individuals.

‘To witness in Sednaya was an act of survival’ … Lawrence Abu Hamdan. {Photograph}: Stuart Wilson/Getty Photos for Turner Modern

The one factor to puncture the silence was the beatings that will vibrate the partitions and reverberate all through the empty water pipes within the cells. “It doesn’t sound as if somebody is hitting a physique”, Jamal defined, “however like somebody is demolishing a wall.” “The entire construction vibrates,” Salam instructed me, as he described the way in which the regime weaponised the omnidirectional bleed of sound so {that a} beating for one was skilled by all. After which silence.

Again in 2016, whispers, echoes and sesame seeds have been all we needed to inform the story of this dying camp. Within the few days because it has been liberated, now we have already seen documentation of what these survivors described to me; in a single video a person stays within the submissive squat place prisoners have been compelled to occupy within the presence of the guards and he doesn’t reply to his liberators once they ask his title. Now that Sednaya is liberated, the work of extra tangible investigative practices, reminiscent of forensic anthropology, will begin with a view to perceive the size of this crime towards humanity.

Our investigation taught us that the structure of the jail was inextricable from the violence that occurred inside. Within the minds of survivors, the expertise of the constructing couldn’t be remoted from starvation, torture, the fixed risk of dying and sensory deprivation. And but already fully completely different photographs of Sednaya are touchdown on our social media feeds. We see individuals shifting by way of it unhindered, with lights on, speaking loudly, with open eyes, whereas the countless sounds of torture are changed by the incredulous cries of prisoners in the meanwhile of their liberation.

As horrendous as their expertise was, most of the survivors we interviewed didn’t need Sednaya to be torn down. They foresaw a free Syria, during which this weapon within the guise of a constructing needs to be preserved and the recollections it accommodates safeguarded.

‘Lots of the survivors we interviewed didn’t need Sednaya to be torn down’ … a girl appears round a room at Sednaya jail on 9 December. {Photograph}: Hussein Malla/AP

Samer, one other witness, remembered the joyous sound of bread slapping on the ground exterior the cell doorways, a noise that meant that he would have simply sufficient meals to reside one other day. He wished to listen to this sound once more and mentioned that if he may, he would report it, make it his ringtone and play it at his wedding ceremony. This response to a sound that encapsulated a lot of the horror he lived by way of taught me simply how treasured the reminiscence of violence and oppression might be.

Sednaya should now be used to serve the hundreds of lives which have been imprinted by it. There is a chance to make use of it to heal by making it a website of the preservation of reminiscence of the hundreds of people that survived this dying camp and for many who didn’t.

To witness in Sednaya was an act of survival. Listening to and figuring out the place the guards have been always may enable you to reside. Listening out for the sonic particulars was important, be it the resonant metallic “tong” of the guards descending the metallic central spiral staircase, or decoding which cell door they opened by the actual sound of that particular lock, or by listening to what number of new prisoners have been being introduced into the jail and committing to reminiscence any names overheard of individuals being taken for execution.

All these particulars helped them to outlive, but additionally helped us to inform the story of Sednaya for future generations. On this means, these survivors-cum-earwitnesses taught me tips on how to hear and use sound in defence of human rights. Their acute sensitivity to sound taught me how this medium could be a weapon of torture and collective punishment – but additionally how efficient listening might be as an act of resistance.


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