Editor’s note: Don Luce recently reported that the Thai junta requested nuclear weapons from the United States for possible use against Vietnam. The report is based on a cable from U.S. Ambassador Charles Whitehouse to the State Department reporting on a conversation last October with Thanat Khoman, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Thai junta.
The cable reads, in part, “He [Thanat] said it was obvious to him that Thailand could never match the Vietnamese, should a conventional attack be launched across the border. Thus it was most important to Thailand to acquire and exercise whatever means it could--unconventional or diplomatic--in order to prevent a Vietnamese move against his country… I understood his use of the word ‘unconventional’ to mean ‘nuclear.’”
All through the night we sang songs and played cards with the workers and vocational students who had come to join the demonstration at Thammasat University. Things were generally quiet and relaxed on the campus grounds. Early in the morning we began to hear sporadic firing, but we thought it was just some vocational student groups.” Tong was telling his story of October 6th to a friend who had come to visit him in prison.
“About 7 a.m. the firing got heavy. We looked out beyond the gates of the university and saw thousands of people storming the gates, shooting, yelling. It was a panic situation then,” the young student remembered. “Hundreds of us tried to flee. I ran outside with two of my friends. They were ahead of me running up a long flight of stairs. They were shot right in front of me, Killed. I stopped and ran back into the building. I tried to hide from the shooting, but the cross-firing was so heavy-the building had too many windows. One student was using a handgun firing out of the window. I begged him to stop. Fighting back was no use.
“I finally found a bathroom where several girls were hiding too,” Tong continued. “After a few hours of shooting we put a white flag out a small window, but it just drew more fire. After that we just waited. We could hear screaming, yelling, shooting, but we weren’t sure what was happening. Several hours later the police came through the building searching for students. When they found us in the bathroom, they dragged us out, searched our bodies, then pushed and shoved us outside with their guns. Once there they made me strip to my waist and then crawl across the football field on my stomach under the guns of hundreds of police. Thousands of other students were already lying on the ground.”
The four hour automatic weapons and mortar fire attack at Thammasat University in downtown Bangkok on October 6 was led by the Thai Border Patrol Police, created and advised by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency since 1951 as a front against communist insurgency. The police were joined by 20,000 fanatic right wing students, Red Guars and Village Scouts who followed, savagely beating, kicking, lynching, and burning to death even students holding white flags or those being carried out by medical evacuation teams. Government figures suggest that 48 students were killed; independent sources, however, estimate that at least 100 young people died before the assault ended. Another 3,000 students were arrested. At six in the evening the military announced that it had seized power.
Since the student demonstrations of October 1973 and the resultant experimentation with democracy, the military factions which were ousted have waited for an opportune moment to return to power. In the interim period, various groups such as the Federation of Labor Unions, Farmers’ Federation, and the National Student Center grew in numbers and influence. But during this time as well a growing number of leaders of these organizations were systematically assassinated. The violence mounted as the national elections drew closer in April 1976.
The killings were often depicted by the news media as factional fighting between rival student groups, or local farmer disputes. But in fact, when a few of those responsible for the killings were caught, they were found to be members of the Nawaphon, Red Guars and Village Scouts, and vigilante groups closely linked to the Internal Security Command (formerly the Communist Suppression Operations Command), which in turn receives support from the CIA and the Pentagon.
The violent events at Thammasat were set in motion by the return of former Thai dictator, Field Marshall Thanom Kittakachorn from exile in Singapore on September 19, a factor almost forgotten in the ensuing attack, coup, and rumors of counter-coups. For the first few days after Thanom returned, the students simply waited for the government to act as it had in expelling Field Marshall Prapas, who had returned to Thailand several weeks earlier. When nothing happened, the students began putting up posters calling for Thanom’s ouster. Several students were beaten up by hooligans. Two electrical workers were lynched 60 kilometers north of Bangkok when they were caught putting up similar posters.
When the government still didn’t act, the students at Thammasat staged a demonstration. They put on a drama in which one of the actors, allegedly resembling Crown Prince Vijiralongkorn, was hung in effigy. The Army Divisional Radio Station immediately published an embellished photo of the act and began stirring up mass hysteria, from 6 p.m. on October 5 to dawn the next morning. Radio broadcasts called on the people to come to Bangkok to “defend the monarchy” and added, “Killing a communist is not sin.” By morning an angry mob of about 20,000 had massed outside the university.
During the past three months the new military government has labeled many student groups as “communist sympathizers” in its propaganda. But those Thais and Westerners who know the students, including journalists, foreign diplomats and Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist clergy, strongly disagree. They feel that the student demonstrations for the abolition of the military dictatorship and implementation of democracy in 1973 were a genuine search for a peaceful means of bringing about a more just society and government in Thailand. The demonstrations on October 5 and 6, they say, were an attempt to preserve the democracy for which many of their fellow students had died.
Since the military coup and violence at Thammasat University, Thai police sources say that 5,000 people, including children under 14 years of age, have been arrested and detained as “dangerous to society.” Some observers with police contacts, however, estimate that as many as 20,000 people have already been imprisoned. A Thai police source said that a list of 60,000 people, including anyone suspected of political sentiments contrary to those of the military and the extreme right, was compiled before the coup. “Order No. 22” of October 13 authorizes arrest for 180 days without trial or charges pending investigation. To allow for the massive increase in the number of prisoners, the Thai Undersecretary of the Interior announced in November that the government soon plans to spend $2.5 million on building five new prisons.
Although it is difficult to obtain information on conditions in the prisons, some Thais have been able to collect eyewitness accounts of some beatings and the crude torture of male prisoners, particularly student leaders. One former prisoner said he saw a student leader beaten over the head with the butt of a gun and then kicked to the floor. A “special policeman” yelled at him to “get up and fight” and then kicked him in the stomach. According to another report,110 prisoners (including 60 women), regarded by the authorities as the most “hard core,” are being held in cramped, dark isolation cells.
Tong, a student arrested at Thammasat, recently told a friend who visited him about conditions in the Ban Khan Prison where he is detained. “At first all of us were taken to the same prison in the center of Bangkok. The conditions were very crowded. Some students were beaten. Later we were dispersed to various jails in the city.
“Now several of us share one small cell here with others arrested for crimes varying from theft to murder. We get two meals a day, but it only seems like one. Our morale is very low because of constant pressure and arguments from the other prisoners. We feel sure that there are police spies among them. If we don’t enter into arguments and fights, we are suspected of being ‘abnormal’ and labeled communists. In this prison there are 27 women laborers who have made a contract to remain together until they are all released. They fear that if only a few remain behind, they will be used sexually.”
One student, a Christian, arrested at Thammasat has been held without bail since the 6th. His family as well as a group of young people from his church have tried to visit him in prison, but so far they have been denied permission. Many of the other 3,000 students arrested at the university have been released on bail of $1,000. But poorer students and laborers who joined the student demonstration have no money or means to pay the bail.
In many cases the families of the laborers in the countryside depended heavily on the wages of the workers for their support. Now they have nothing. One Christian friend knows of at least 40 laborers, both men and women, still being held in Bangkok prisons. They have no one to help even provide an extra change of clothes, soap, or medicine. He has asked other Thai Christians to contribute money to buy extra clothing for these prisoners, but so far has only been able to collect $125.
Although there have been few recently reported arrests in Bangkok, in the country side arrests of students, laborers, doctors, teachers, and even farmers continue. In Bangkok, those students who were involved in the student movement but were not arrested or those just released are closely watched and followed. Their families are frequently asked where the students are and how they spend their time. One Thai friend described the present tense mood in Bangkok as like “a mouse who is waiting for the cat to pounce.” Some of the students who were in prison and then released have now disappeared. An American missionary told us that many families are urging their sons and some of their daughters to leave, either for the U.S., France, or the Thai jungle-because of their fear of the police. Several hundred have succeeded in crossing the border into Laos.
Protests against the recent violation of human rights in Thailand have so far met with little success. A week after the coup, U.S. Ambassador Whitehouse warned that “repressive and arbitrary acts” of the new regime would result in criticism from the U.S. Congress. But Thai foreign affairs advisor Thanat Khoman responded that, “little material harm would result if certain members of Congress would find the new regime objectionable,” because U.S. economic and military aid is already being cut back. Thanat continued to explain that the military leaders were more concerned about creating a “favorable investment climate.” Investors, he reportedly said, are more anxious about political stability than human rights.
Other Thais, however, many of them deeply religious Buddhists and Christians who had friends killed or imprisoned in recent months, are seriously troubled by the events at Thammasat and the loss of democratic rights wiped out by the military junta’s initial decrees. “Can we go on with institutions, beautiful hospitals and schools, worship at 11 o’clock every Sunday, and ignore the problems of the poor, the imprisoned and those in hiding and afraid for their lives?” a Christian leader in Bangkok recently asked. Concerned Thais have formed into small, tight-knit groups to support each other and to work at collecting information on prison conditions as well as trying to be supportive to the prisoners’ families.
Yet many of these people are finding it very dangerous to work on the problem of human rights in Thailand today. Any time they visit a friend in prison they must leave their name and identification number. They fear that they too face possible arrest. Many of these people who have been seeking nonviolent solutions to the inequities of the Thai society and are now under pressure from the new regime are asking seriously if there is really a third alternative for them any longer. Or will they in the end be crushed by the inevitable clash between the military regime and the Marxist-led Thai Patriotic Front which has been gaining in numbers and strength in October?
Linda and Murray Hiebert have been with Mennonite Volunteer Service in Indochina for several years, and were living in Vientiane, Laos when this article appeared. This article is based on visits to Thailand since the military coup in October 1976.
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