1976 Massacre: Article & Photos

[CTO]

If you have the book, I'll swap it for the Teak Wallah as a read

[Flashermac]

I'll have to dig through the boxes I packed when I moved ... uh over a year ago.

 

I grabbed up WWII themed Thai books whenever I saw them for a while, thinking I'd write about the war here. Since other folks are doing so now, I never have.

 

 

 

[shygye]

It doesn't matter if others have written about that time period. Look at all the books written about the USA in WWII or the Civil War for that matter.

[Neo]

The problem here is Samak claims 1 person died. Then there is the student remembrance claiming the toll was much higher. Ultimately, whose version will survive? Surely the former. I am not sure which one to believe. What Thamasaart should do is review the ID cards of all the students of that year and see how many ceased to exist. Maybe the answer is 400, but since they have not bothered to get proof of anything for 30 years it casts doubt on their claims and maybe it is just 1 after all. They owe it to the ones who have fallen to not let this get white washed.

 

[Flashermac]

<< What Thamasaart should do is review the ID cards of all the students of that year and see how many ceased to exist. >>

 

The protestors were from many universities, with most not from Thammasat! They had simply moved from Sanam Luang into Thammasat and set up there, forcing the rector to suspect the scheduled exams and close the university.

 

The victims in the photographs have been identified. Believe me there were many more than one! Photographs of dozens were printed in the Thai language papers, before the coup happened and the papers were ordered to stop.

 

The problem is that no one really knows who was there. The protestors did not keep a roster. I seriously doubt it was anything near 400. The estimate of 40 is probably on target though.

 

Samak also denies he did anything to encourage the attack. That is BS, since he was publicly calling for action against them. So what sort of action did he think it would be?

 

 

 

 

[Mentors]

here the link to an Interview Samak give to Aljazeeras TV.

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/02/20/headlines/headlines_30065938.php

 

 

Maybe the time will come some people will end in Den Hague. :alert:

[Neo]

That has to be the worst performance of an interviewee I have seen and Samak loses credibility. Claiming he doesn't know why there is violence in the south is just one of many jaw dropping responses. Surely if this was a job interview it wouldn't have lasted that long before the interviewer had enough.

 

[Flashermac]

Bangkok Post

19 Feb 2008

 

 

Adisorn warns PM to back off

Dwelling on events of Oct 6 could split PPP

 

 

Former Thai Rak Thai (TRT) executive Adisorn Piangket yesterday warned Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej that his allies could easily turn on him if he continues to dwell on the controversy surrounding the Oct 6, 1976 massacre of student protesters at Thammasat University. The warning from Mr Adisorn showed the fragile relations between Mr Samak and loyalists of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

 

Some members of the People Power party (PPP), which is made up largely of members of the dissolved TRT, are former student activists who once held a grudge against Mr Samak over the incident. However, Mr Samak and those PPP members later agreed to bury the hatchet and work together to fight the coup makers who deposed Mr Thaksin two years ago.

 

Mr Adisorn was a student activist at the time of the earlier Oct 14, 1973 uprising and is one of the 111 former TRT executives banned from politics after their party was dissolved for poll fraud.

 

The issue was also fiercely contested by Mr Samak and Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva during a debate on the government's policies in parliament on Monday. Mr Samak pointed out that he was not the interior minister at the time of the uprising. He took the job on Oct 22, 1976 _ two weeks afterwards _ and was never linked to the violent suppression of the student movement on Oct 6.

 

Activists and relatives of victims of the uprising were angered by Mr Samak's recent interview on CNN in which he said that only ''one unlucky person'' was killed in the uprising.

 

Those who were at the scene believe that hundreds of demonstrators died, although the official death toll was 46 people killed when armed police and soldiers stormed Thammasat University.

 

Mr Adisorn yesterday urged the prime minister to apologise to the public for making the comment, saying it was not appropriate to make light of an incident involving the deaths of many people.

 

Bringing up such a sensitive and divisive issue could turn friends into foes, he told reporters.

 

[color:red]But Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung defended Mr Samak, saying those who levelled accusations against the prime minister were mistaken.

 

Mr Chalerm said Mr Samak had no authority to quell the student movement because he was made interior minister only after the Oct 6 incident. He said Mr Samak had just said what he had seen.

 

He said the violence broke out because a drunken police officer at the scene accidentally fired his gun.[/color]

 

Mr Samak conceded in parliament on Monday that he told foreign reporters only one person died in the Oct 6 incident, and that is what he saw happen at Sanam Luang. He said he did not go to see dead bodies at other places.

 

Mr Adisorn said the incident was the most brutal suppression of student activists Thailand has ever seen.

 

"The incident is not a topic that should be treated lightly. It is about the loss of lives," he said.

 

"The architects of the Oct 6 massacre of students must be made to pay for their actions. It is a trauma in society that needs to be dealt with," he said.

 

On the evening of Oct 6, after the suppression of the uprising, a military junta by the name of the National Administrative Reform Council took charge and put in power a civilian government led by Tanin Kraivixien.

 

Mr Adisorn said a lot of people were persecuted under the authoritarian rule of that government.

 

He said the history of the Oct 6 incident was in need of revision. Independent bodies such as the media or human rights organisations should take the initiative to do so, he said.

 

Muanchon Saengsuk, one of the student activists who took part in the uprising on Oct 14, 1973 and fled into the jungles and joined the Communist Party of Thailand, supported calls to revise the history of the incident.

 

Mr Muanchon accused Mr Samak of telling lies when he said in the CNN interview that only one man died.

 

He called on other "Oct 14 people" to come forward and disprove what Mr Samak said of the Oct 6 massacre.

 

He said "October people" were regrouping to make known their stand.

 

[Flashermac]

Bangkok Post

21 Feb 2008

 

[color:blue]Burying truth does no good[/color]

 

 

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's vow yesterday not to speak any more about the events of Oct 6, 1976 should at least serve his own good, because the more he talks about the traumatic events of that day, the more backlash he is likely to get.

 

This was clearly evident from the criticism heaped on him for his insensitive and distorted remark in an interview with the CNN that only "one unlucky person" was killed that fateful day. The prime minister yesterday also said he would have no objection if a committee were to be set up to revise history about the bloody incident.

 

Calls for a revision of this sad chapter in Thai political history have previously been voiced by historians and relatives of those victims brutally killed and many others still unaccounted for. Sadly though, all of them went unheeded as government after government proved reluctant to take the initiative, for fear it would drive a wedge in Thai society. In other words, the issue would be better left buried and forgotten. And this has been the case for the past 30-plus years.

 

Thanks to Prime Minister Samak anyway, as his controversial remark about the event has suddenly touched off public interest in the case. It constitutes a blessing in disguise although Mr Samak himself deserves no credit. Calls for a revision of the history about this tragic event have been renewed. And, hopefully, this time they will not fall on deaf ears.

 

Mr Samak's statement yesterday that he would have no objection if a committee were set up to revise history about this particular national tragedy, is not good enough, especially for a man fully aware of the incident but unable to recall the number of victims killed by state authorities and right-wing extremists. Instead, the government should take the initiative by setting up an impartial panel to investigate the case so as to set the record straight and, above all, to clear Mr Samak of persistent allegations that he might have played a hand in the affair. If, for whatever reason, the government is reluctant to take the initiative, then parliament should do the job instead.

 

Belated though it is, there is a need to set the record straight about the "October 6" incident, to posthumously redeem and recognise the innocent lives lost in the incident and those still unaccounted for. Equally important is the need to find out the truth about the incident: who were the real perpetrators behind the hate campaign and the bloody crackdown against student protesters?

 

Today, most of our young people, especially those under 40, are quite unaware of what happened on Oct 6, 1976. Many others know very little about it. Several doubt whether a massacre actually took place on that fateful day. Not even Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung can be relied on to tell us more about the event, after he publicly stated that the tragedy was sparked off by a drunken police captain who accidently fired a gun into the air.

 

Unlike the "Oct 14" uprising which has been given some space in the school textbooks, the "Oct 6" massacre which is no less significant, has been practically omitted or at best mentioned only in passing. This is why our young people are completely unaware of it. Newspapers are no help either, as all newspapers were closed down for a week or more from Oct 7, thus preventing the public from learning exactly what happened that day at Thammasat University and Sanam Luang, where brutal crimes were committed by the state against innocent students, who were peacefully protesting against the return home of former dictator Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn.

 

The "Oct 6" massacre is deemed the darkest spot in Thai political history, given the scale of the brutality unleashed against the victims and the involvement of state mechanisms in the crime. And for the sake of national reconciliation, we may forgive the perpetrators, many of whom have already died. But the affair itself must not be forgotten, and deserves substantial space in our history books.

 

 

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