“A battered body hangs from a tree as a man swings a folding chair over his head, preparing to smash it into the corpse. Spectators watch intently at a slight distance, some smiling, as if watching a puppet show. A photo of that moment immortalizes the bloody events of October 6, 1976, when heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured and lynched would-be escapees. Even so, what happened there, and why, is to some degree forgotten in Thailand. “Younger Thai people look at the photo and ask where it is from”, said Australian filmmaker David Tucker, who is making a documentary about the killings. “They have no idea about the sixth of October. Some say, 'It must have come from another country. It couldn't have happened in Thailand.' People old enough to remember October 6 can guess where it is from and some have seen the picture before, but generally speaking, people are reluctant to talk”.

Anocha Suwichakornpong, a Thai director who has made a film inspired by the events of Oct. 6, sees parallels with modern-day Thailand. The military seized control from an elected government in May 2014, following months of sometimes violent protests, and appears assured of maintaining control for the next several years. “I feel the political climate of the recent years has been quite similar to that of 1970s Thailand, especially in the days leading up to the last coup (in 2014), whereby right-wingers and ultra-royalists were becoming more extreme and at the same time the military has been gaining more power. It's almost like we are living in a time warp”, she said.

Three years before the 1976 killings, students spearheaded protests forcing Thailand's unpopular military dictators to flee the country, ushering in real parliamentary democracy. It was a tumultuous time to manage such a transition. In 1975, three neighboring countries – Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – had been taken over by communists. Thailand had been a staunch ally of the United States in the Vietnam War, but Washington was now turning tail in Southeast Asia, and its protective shield carried no convincing guarantee. To Thailand's establishment, democracy looked messy, divisive, pitting farmers against landowners, workers against employers. The Marxist rhetoric of student activists hinted at an enemy within.

In the autumn of 1976, the students overplayed their hand when they protested the return to Thailand of one of the ousted dictators. A skit meant to represent the police killing of two activists was misrepresented by right-wing media as insulting the country's revered royal family. Students kept up their protests even as army-backed right-wing groups began to howl for blood. By midnight October 5, the 3,000 to 4,000 protesting students inside Thammasat were under siege. Irate royalists and organized thugs gathered outside gates that the students had locked for their own protection. Police, many from heavily armed special units trained for combat, fired revolvers, assault rifles, grenade launchers and even anti-tank weapons upon the students, a handful of whom are believed to have returned fire with small arms. By midmorning, the police were sweeping the university grounds and buildings, making their student prisoners strip off shirts and lie face down on the central athletic field. Thugs rushed in unimpeded, trying to snatch vulnerable students on the fringes, even seeking to take the wounded from ambulances.

Hanged bodies were battered until unrecognizable. Corpses had stakes driven into them. A pyre was made of four casually stacked victims. All of it was in plain view on a public field outside the university. The official death toll was 46; more reliable estimates from scholars put it upwards of 100. When the army seized power later that day, it imposed a news blackout. Newspapers were temporarily shut down, film and notes seized from reporters. A TV announcer who put footage of the carnage on air was immediately fired. But pictures from international news and broadcast agencies beat the blackout. Newspapers around the world published the shocking images”. – Jerry Harmer and Tassanee Vejpongsa via The Associated Press



In this October 6, 1976 file photo a right-wing student, center foreground, draws his arm back to strike a captured and wounded leftist student being taken by police to an ambulance in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo blood streaming down his face, a leftist student, center, wounded and captured by police is helped to an ambulance at the Thammasat University campus in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo a captured and wounded leftist student is taken by police to an ambulance in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo, a wounded man is carried to an ambulance as authorities and leftist students trade fire on Thammasat University campus in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo a policeman kicks a leftist student who surrendered moments before as police moved in on Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo right-wing Thai students kick and beat a leftist student who surrendered after a battle on the campus of Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo, police stand guard over leftist Thai students on a soccer field at Thammasat University, in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Gary Mangkorn/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976, file photo, police fire a shell as they storm the walls of Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo leftist students who surrendered to police lie on the ground of the soccer field at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting orders from their captors. (Photo by Neal Ulevich/AP Photo)





In this October 6, 1976 file photo a wounded student is taken to an ambulance after he was injured in the fighting at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Gary Mangkorn/AP Photo)