 |
Political tensions between leftist and rightist forces reached a bloody
climax in October 1976. On October 5, right-wing newspapers in the capital
published a photograph of student demonstrators at Thammasat University
reenacting the strangling and hanging of two student protestors by police the
previous month. The photograph, which was later found to have been altered,
showed one of the students as being made up to resemble the king's son, Crown
Prince Vajiralongkorn. The right wing perceived the demonstration as a damning
act of lèse-majeste. That evening police surrounded the campus of Thammasat
University, where 2,000 students were holding a sit-in. Fighting between
students and police (including contingents of the paramilitary Border Patrol
Police) broke out. The following day, groups of Nawa Phon, Red Gaurs, and
Village Scouts "shock troops" surged onto the campus and launched a
bloody assault in which hundreds of students were killed and wounded and more
than 1,000 arrested. That evening the military seized power, established the
National Administrative Reform Council (NARC), and ended that phase of
Thailand's intermittent experimentation with democracy.
|