The desecration of corpses on 6 October 1976: who, how and why Puangthong Pawakapan and Thongchai Winichakul - 06 Oct, 2019

From careful study of the available evidence, we have found only one person who lost their life due to mob vigilante violence or torture. Instead, bodies were often brutally treated after the victims had already died. Several victims lost their lives from bullets or explosions, but their bodies continued to be assailed long after the life had left them. The images of 6 October that have circulated in the aftermath are then images of crowds egging each other on to desecrate the deceased.

That knowledge may provide us some small comfort that the victims did not have to endure such intense torture while alive, but it also raises formidable questions. Why did people feel compelled to treat the bodies of the deceased so savagely—in public before thousands of eyes, in front of state officials and in the company of hundreds of both Thai and international journalists? How are we to understand the public desecration of corpses in Thai society?......................................

.....................It should finally be noted that the direct perpetrators of lynching and corpse desecration on 6 October were not state officers, though the latter may have assisted, declined to protect victims, or looked the other way. State actors played a role in establishing the conditions or circumstances that led to 6 October, but a large number of the most savage acts that day were committed by civilians. The cruelty was the culmination of a collective, voluntary effort to enact what society at large viewed as befitting the victims. And so it is that we have photos of crowds smiling with delight before the tortured bodies, undisturbed by moral doubt or discomfort.

This is an abridged version of a Thai language article published in Fahdiewkan and Documentation of October 6. Documentation of October 6 is a non-profit online archive whose mission is to collect and disseminate materials related to the massacre at Thammasat University on 6 October 1976.
Read here: https://www.newmandala.org/the-desecrat ... w-and-why/

SURASAK GLAHAN
Dep Ed Bankok Post (2016, abbreviated)

Forty years after the student massacre at Thammasat University, it seems as if our political leaders have learned nothing from it. The same vicious cycle of state-sponsored violence has persisted, letting those in power get away with their crimes.

I still recall the evening of May 19, 2010, .....my editor telling me to leave the red-shirt protest site ....... I heard the sound of gunfire..... The shooting took place as the military started to reclaim the demonstration site.

Almost 100 people were killed and around 1,500 injured in political violence and crackdowns from April to May 2010. Didn't we learn from the 1976 slaughter, or even the Black May massacre in 1992?

He then goes on to quote the two authors of K's piece about the desecrations ^^^ from a T. Uni seminar he attended in 2016, held to reflect on the events of 1976 on the 40 year anniversary.

"Two years after the 1976 crackdown, the coup's perpetrator passed an amnesty law to pardon all parties involved in the incident.
"It is privileged impunity. The higher rank in society they have, the higher level of impunity they have," Thongchai Winichakul, one of the 1976 student activists, told the crowd on Saturday. Such impunity has become institutional, he said, allowing several governments to "lie" about their violations of human rights."

"Such a prejudice is reflected in the final report of the Truth for Reconciliation Commission tasked with investigating the 2010 crackdown. Tthe Abhisit Vejjajiva government did not pass any amnesty law, the report helped whitewash the event and spared government and security officers from being held accountable, said Puangthong Pawakapan, a Chulalongkorn University political scientist.
"The report doesn't mention that it was a shoot to kill strategy, not shoot to defend," she said

The commission's final report lessened the degree of violence. It pointed out that "men in black" mingled with the protesters, triggering the use of force by soldiers."

So, it seems that despite the public desecrstion horrors that followed, everybody knows who is ultimately responsible - and completely untouchable. https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opi ... l-violence