WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC SCENES. The 6 October 1976 Thammasat University Massacre เหตุการณ์ 6 ตุลา, was a crackdown on student protests against Thailand's right wing military government and the return of Field Marshall Thanom Kittikachorna, a military dictator, an anti-communist and Prime Minister from 1963 to 1973. Previously, Thanom had left for exile in the United States following student and civil demands for a constitutional government that developed into the 14 October 1973 uprising. Thanom returned to become a novice monk at Wat Bowonivet, a high ranking royal wat, and resultingly it all kicked off. The students were shown to have "antogonised" the ultra right wing by performing a political play that featured a mock hanging (inspired by the murder of three demonstartors in Nakhom Pathom). The pictures of the performance were doctored by the Thai press, so that it appeared as if the students were mock hanging Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The military, the police and far right paramilitarists responded by storming Thammasat University's Sanam Luang (Tha Prachan) campus to break up demonstrations, killing (officially) 40 plus students. However, the real death rate is known to be far, far higher. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, the now deposed prime minister, Samak Sundravej suggested that only one student had been killed. He mocked the interviewer as being too young to remember the events, and as she was not there she was basing her ideas on "dirty histories ...
Tags: Thammasat, 1974
