Remembering 6 October 1976 - the Forgotten Massacre
Tuesday, February 26th, 20086 October was another black mark in Thai politics. After 14
October 1973, a new PM, new constitution and fresh elections
gave hope for a change for the better. But from 1973 - 1976, a
series of weak coalition governments floundered in a chain of
musical chairs.
By 1976 the political mood was somber. A unified Vietnam
after the Communist victory and the killing fields in Cambodia
under the Khmer Rouge hung like a haunting specter over the
region. With the withdrawal of US forces from Asia, South
East Asian countries were living in apprehension.
This was also a period of newfound freedom for the students
and intellectuals. Still heady from their moral victory three
years earlier, they engaged in open expression, organized
demonstrations, strikes and demands for reform.
But by 6 October 1976, the winds of political change have
shifted. The very people who backed the students three years
ago were skeptical of them now in the light of the communist
threat.
The conservative middle class found the strident left wing
radicalism unsettling. There was a strong anti-communist
sentiment in Thailand with an insurgency in the south. The
proximity of communist neighbors in Vietnam and Cambodia
compounded the fears.
There was a rise of right wing groups at the village level and
among technical and vocational students to counter the left-
wing groups, with frequent clashes between the two. The weak
government torn by factional strife was unable to rein in the
two extremes.
In the midst of all this, Field Marshall Thanom Kittikachorn,
the deposed dictator in 1973, returned to Thailand and was
ordained as a monk. With the bitter memories of 14 October
1973 still fresh in their minds, the students were incensed. They
massed for a huge protest in Thammasat University.
By now, the students, with their left wing liberal attitudes, were
treated with suspicion. As in some other South East Asian
countries it was easy to be tarred a communist just by
opposing the establishment.
The spark that fired the pogrom was the burning by students
of an effigy that allegedly resembled a member of royal family.
In the eyes of the common people and the right wing groups
the students had gone too far.
On evening of the 6 October 1976, right-wing groups, police
and the military stormed the campus in an orgy of killings and
unspeakable atrocities to the living and the dead. Hopes for a
dawn of a new democracy were quickly crushed. Many
intellectuals fled to the hills.
Relatives of the dead and missing bemoan the lack of public
concern for the victims of the 6 October 1976 who were not
held in the same regard as the martyrs of 14 October 1973.
6 October was like a nightmare society preferred to forget.
Every year on 6 October, relatives, sympathetic academics and
politicians gather at the 6 October 1976 memorial in Thammasat University to honor the
memory of the unfortunate victims in the hope that they won’t
be completely forgotten.
This article first appeared in Tour Bangkok
Legacies a historical travel site on people, places and
events that shaped the landscape of Bangkok. The author Eric
Lim, a free-lance writer, lives in Bangkok Thailand.
