History To Famous 1976 Neal Ulevich Hanging Photo

[Boo Radley]

Anyone know any more background to this famous 1976 Neal Ulevich photo I came across?

The accompanying text says:

 

Brutality in Bangkok

1977 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Neal Ulevich, Associated Press

October 1976: Thailand's third government in two years teeters on the brink, rocked by clashes between right-wing vocational students and left-wing university students. Late one night, two liberal students are lynched.

Associated Press photographer Neal Ulevich covered the Vietnam War for five years. But nothing he saw in the jungle prepared him for the morning of Oct. 6, when right-wing students attack left-wing students near the university. "When I got there, it was getting more and more violent. Paramilitary troops heavily armed with recoilless rifles showed up. The left-wing students were not armed and were not shooting back. They took refuge in the university buildings.

"Tremendous volleys of automatic weapons were fired across the soccer fields into the classrooms. There were bodies all over, glass breaking. There was no place to take cover. I was very scared."

Finally, the left-wing students surrender. Ulevich heads for the gates, anxious to get his pictures back to his office. "I saw some commotion in the trees. I walked down there and I saw a body hanging. He was certainly dead, but the crowd was so enraged that a man was hitting the body on the head with a folding chair. I stood there to see if anybody was looking at me. Nobody was. I took a few frames and walked away."

In the end, an irony: "When I won the Pulitzer, the Bangkok papers noted it on Page One. They were very proud that a photographer from Bangkok had won the Pulitzer. They didn't show the pictures."

http://www.flickr.co...ago/5000120044/

[Flashermac]

The guy was a student from Chulalongkorn. I get pissed off when idiots write the Thammasat students were protesting. In fact, the uni had to close when they demonstrators took over the campus - forcing the cancellation of final exams. the prostestors were from many university, few of them from TU.

 

And yes, they were very leftist student. I saw their posters of Marx, Mao, Ho, the Khmer Rouge leaders etc. What really set things off though was the flag of the proposed "People's Democratic Republic of Thailand." That infuriated all Thais who saw it. The massacre was an atrocity, but the students had been courting it. Remember that this was not long after the communist had taken over South VN, Laos and Cambodia. The students - at least the activists - were demanding the same in Thailand. The reason the dead student was hung is because he was accused of being an agent of Hanoi. (The Thai far right had made the charge.) The protestors were warned that the rightists were coming to attack them, but they voted to remain and become martyrs.

 

I prefer not to think of those days. I saw some of the violence first hand, very unpleasant memories

 

p.s. Photos of the massacre were indeed shown in the newspapers. But the next day or so the military staged a coup and shut down the papers. Nevertheless, the Post has yet to explain why it posted a doctored photo of a mock hanging in which the "victim" had been retouched to look like a royal. I colleague saw the actual "hanging" and said no one thought it was intended to be anyone other than the demonstrators who were beaten unconcisous and hund by police in Nakorn Patom (I think). That apparent act of lese majeste inflamed passions even more. The police asked to see the negative to determine if it had been altered. The Post replied it had "lost it".

 

People also overlook the late Samak Sundaravej's role in calling for the deaths of the protestors, that same Samak that dear sweet Thaksin picked to be PM in his place.

[Boo Radley]

Thanks Flasher.

All a bit before my time but an interesting period in Thai history. Must do some more reading on it.

Came across a copy of the alleged doctored mock hanging photo. Apparently it was taken on 04/10/76 during a play performed by Thammasat University students depicting the murder of two trade unionists by police in Nakhon Pathom on 25/09/76.

First time I've seen the photo and the guy does indeed look a little like the then 24-year-old Crown Prince would have looked at the time. Would be interesting to read the papers at the time (English language & Thai) to see how they reported things.

http://en.wikipedia....ersity_massacre

[Flashermac]

That is not the doctored photo. The one that caused the stir had the "victim" wearing white shoes (which the CP often did) and was changed it other ways. It was carried on the front page of only two newspapers - one Thai (now defunct) and the Bangkok Post. The BP still has not explained why.

 

A lot of what you will read is just plain wrong, written by people who weren't even in Thailand at the time. It was bad enough, but they make it worse. TU every anniversary posts newspapers from the time around the football field. (As I said, it was reported ... briefly.)

 

I didn't teach at TU at the time, but we had some violence on my university's campus shortly before the massacre. Some leftist students came up from Bangkok with Marxist posters and held a rally at the open air dining hall. Musicians played the usual Caravan songs (Khon gap kwai etc), then a leftist student began giving his spiel. When he got to the part saying "... then it is agreed that communism is good for Thailand," a vocational student pulled a zip gun and shot at him. The bullet missed the speaker, but struck a musician. Panic occurred as people tried to flee from the dining hall. The next morning, the rector sensibly ordered the campus closed and all students to return home. Two or three days later, the TU massacre took place.

 

Ironically, I had arrived in LOS as a PC vol just 6 months before the October 1973 protests that led to the "Gang of Three" having to flee the country. It was the return of one of them that touched off the new protests. Unfortunately, the Communist Party of Thailand had been unbanned after October 1973. It did its best to take over the national student organisation, only to succeed in turning almost everyone against them. I remember walking with two American friends on the evening of the massacre. A Thai man on a motorcycle saw us as he rode by. He shouted out ..."FARANG KHIT WA THAI THAM MAI DAI. THAM DAI!" And he thrust his fist into the air.

 

It reminded me of the Kent State shooting, when so many people backed the Ohio NG fruit loops who had opened fire on peaceful anti-war protestors. Most Thais seemed to think the students got what they were asking for. It was not a fun time to be here.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_(Thai_band)

 

 

http://books.google.co.th/books?id=TEdueeBj1H0C&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=caravan+khon+kap+khwai&source=bl&ots=GtZZapMVnM&sig=QVZqMvgPR-0a6D3HKQpEIBhwCZI&hl=th&sa=X&ei=gwSXUbb_MIbJrAeY84GwBQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=caravan%20khon%20kap%20khwai&f=false

[huumlaar]

The struggle was prett bad in the North East, Sakon Nakorn Dang comes from around that time, the widely up-reported activities there far outwieghed in attention by the Southern Communiest.

[Flashermac]

The students who fled to the commies quickly became very disillusioned. They were expecting their idealistic version of proletarian democracy, but found the commies in the jungle were dogmatic old line communists. I know one of those who fled to the jungle, now married to a Farang.

[Boo Radley]

...p.s. Photos of the massacre were indeed shown in the newspapers. But the next day or so the military staged a coup and shut down the papers. Nevertheless, the Post has yet to explain why it posted a doctored photo of a mock hanging in which the "victim" had been retouched to look like a royal. I colleague saw the actual "hanging" and said no one thought it was intended to be anyone other than the demonstrators who were beaten unconcisous and hund by police in Nakorn Patom (I think). That apparent act of lese majeste inflamed passions even more. The police asked to see the negative to determine if it had been altered. The Post replied it had "lost it"....

Presumably the photo was doctored to turn public opinion against the students, wasn't it? Since to the casual Thai reader the photo looked very much like the students were advocating the overthrow of the monarchy and with the Thais' fervent love of the Royals, what better way to sway public opinion?

The next day the troops drove in, the protest and sit-in was brutally put down and the student massacre occurred.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siO2u9aRzns

[Flashermac]

I wish I hadn't watched that ... too many bad memories brought back. And yes, the photo was doctored to infuriate the right wing groups ... which it did. Which is why the Post's running it is puzzling.

 

A few of the student protesters had pistols and shot back, but mostly they were just targets. Police warned the riverboats that they would be arrested if they took any of the demonstrators away, so they were trapped there. Some students fled to nearby shop houses where they were sheltered, but the students surrendered when the rightist said they would burn the buildings unless they did. One of my colleagues was then a student at Silpakorn U., and all universities were ordered to close. Police were checking buses for protesters and they questioned him about the "suspicious package" he had. It was a saw-u, but wrapped up could have been a rifle. When he got home, he just stayed put.

 

The students back then were unbelievably naive. I remember one writing about a wonderful book he had just read, all about communism and how good it was. Since I had heard stories about relatives who were stuck under Soviet rule after WWII, I started telling some - waiting in line 2 hours for a bottle of milk, 3 hours for a loaf of bread, my uncle and his wife who were sent to work as slave labourers in Russia. He got a strange look on his face and said he'd never heard about any of that. I don't know if he believed me. I had my English majors read"Animal Farm" as an assignment. Later, I heard several of them call it "a communist book" and saying I must be a communist for assigning it to them. "Animal Farm" is a communist book? Someone who fought the commies in RVN is a communist? Their inability to think reminds me of the red shirts of today and their absolute faith in the divinity of Thaksin Shinawatra.

[Plainsdrifter]

Unfortunately, Thai education has evolved into something used for mind control by political leaders rather than training in the process of western style education. The fact this is happening in the midst of a Buddhist country doesn't help things too.