The fight against communism in Thailand between the years 1949 and 1980 was accompanied by many human rights violations, executions, killings, prison sentences and exiles. A shining and little known example is the 'Red Drum' murders in Phatthalung (southern Thailand) where an estimated 3.000 people were gruesomely killed. That is what the story below is about.
The disappearance of Lim Phaosen
On August 7, 1972, Lim Phaosen, a teacher in Phatthalung Province, was taken from his home never to return. Lim left home that morning to visit a school in another district. A soldier came to ask for him. Lim's mother-in-law, Kloy Ketsang, said he was not home and asked the soldier to come back later.
The soldier found Lim in the other district and forced him to go home, change his sarong for other clothes, and then took Lim to a nearby army camp. Chaweewan, Lim's eight-year-old daughter, and her grandmother cried and begged to let the soldier go to the camp, which was refused. When Lim's wife, Khruawan, came home she was very worried. But the soldier hadn't told Kloy and Chaweewan exactly where he had taken Lim.
Chom Kaewpong, a man from the same village, was also arrested that day but was released a few days later. He said he had seen Lim in the camp. Khruawan hurried to the camp with his medicines but the soldiers told her that they had not arrested Lim and that he was not in the camp.
Khruawan visited a number of camps and towns in the area but failed to find Lim. Finally, she met a survivor of the Thachite camp who told her that Lim had been burned in a 'thang daeng' (red oil drum). This man also said that Lim was killed because he opposed the corrupt plans of an influential person who had a contract to build a school.
Lim had been a civil servant for ten years but his wife Khruawan did not receive a pension and not even his last salary because there was no body and no death certificate (testimony in Thairat daily newspaper, February 7, 1975)
The murders
Between 1969 and 1975, approximately 3.000 people suspected of being communists were murdered in Patthalung province. This was done by putting them, alive but sometimes semi-conscious, in oil drums and burning them. An oil barrel was fitted with a grate at the bottom, someone was placed in the barrel and the whole thing was placed on top of another burning oil barrel.
This was done by soldiers in various camps across the province, such as Baan Kho Lung. A plantation there housed two companies of soldiers from the Senanarong barracks in Songkhla and the Ingkayuth Borihan barracks in Pattani.
"It was the policy of the Thanom Kittikachorn government to permanently expel the communist insurgents," says a former special branch police officer. But the government never specified what that "definitely" meant. While the soldiers burned suspects in oil barrels, other soldiers killed entire families in Nakhorn Si Thammaraat and simply left the bodies lying around, he added. “The subordinates merely carried out orders. Mistakes were inevitable'.
The police also played a role in the drastic crackdown, he confirms. Intelligence services sent lists of suspects who were then killed or sent to the military camp in Baan Kho Lung.
What Fon Silamul remembered
The repression by the police and military drove thousands of villagers into the arms of the outlawed Communist Party. Fon Silamul, now a provincial council member, was one of them. He recalls how fear made him flee to the Phu Banthat ridge after soldiers and police visited his relatives' homes and took all the men to the Baan Kho Lung camp.
When relatives visited the camp a few days later, they were told that some had been released and others were dead. No one returned home.
Fon says he cannot remember a single man, young and old, who still lived in the villages of Baan Na, Lamsin, Khao Khram, Baan Tone, Baan Loh Kwai, Baan Lam Nai, Baan Na Wong, Baan Rai Nua and Baan Kongla after news spread that people suspected of aiding the communists were being burned alive.
“What can villagers like us do when we are sandwiched between government officials and the Party? If we refused to cooperate with any of them, we would be in grave danger. Taking sides with the communists seemed like the best way to survive now that the police and soldiers couldn't protect us and everything was a huge mess.'
When people couldn't rely on government officials, they turned to members of the Communist Party who had established themselves in that area nine years earlier in the early XNUMXs. She pledged to protect the villagers from the military's brutalities and to uphold law and order.
Matters were exacerbated by village chiefs adding names of people with whom they had differences of opinion to the name lists of suspected communists.
Burning human flesh
When Fon and other villagers were asked how they knew those arrested were being burned alive in oil barrels, they said they could hear the screams of the victims over the roar of the military trucks all evening after suspects were taken to the camp. The villagers could smell burning human flesh and see the plumes of smoke rise up into the night sky.
“At the same time, some detainees were thrown from helicopters over the Phu Banthad ridge,” Fon claims.
When asked if they had any evidence of the massacre, Fon and other villagers said they had found skulls and bones along the Klong Muay, close to the Baan Kho Lung camp, after the camp closed in 1975. "Children played football with the skulls and we were told that ashes and other remains were dumped in Lampham, part of Thlae Luang in Phatthalung," Fon added.
Background: the communist uprising 1965-1983
This revolt did not amount to much. The fear of communism, not entirely incomprehensible given the advance in Laos and Vietnam, far outweighed the real danger.
In 1961, small groups of Pathet Lao (the Lao communists) would infiltrate northern Thailand. They recruited among the often oppressed groups, such as the hill tribes. People were sent to China for training. Actual violence did not materialize until 1965 when guerrilla fighters began attacking the security forces.
Most fighters are said to have been Vietnamese and Laotians, but the movement did not initially gain a large following among the Thai population. That changed after the horrific massacre at Thammasaat University on October 6, 1976 when thousands of students fled the "purge" in Bangkok and joined the guerrillas.
Most of the camps were in the northeast, some in the north and south. Many more than 6.000 men and women will not have participated, perhaps 3.000 armed fighters. The Thai army has been able to isolate the insurgents, but the tens of thousands of soldiers have never been able to capture the bases. The communist movement also did not gain much support among the general population.
In 1980, when the uprising had already collapsed due to internal divisions (struggle between the genuine Maoists who focused on China and the more nationalistic Thais), Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda announced a general amnesty. In 1983 the uprising was over. Many ex-guerrilla fighters still hold important positions in both political camps, red and yellow, and in the universities.
In those years between 1965 and 1980, 'Communist' was more a term of abuse for anyone who was seen as a threat to the state and therefore threatened national security than an actual term. Communist was any critical person who did not accept military dictators like Sarit and Thanom. Some were summarily executed in public, many disappeared into prison or went into exile.
The fear of communism, fueled by the Americans, took on morbid proportions and led to a series of human rights violations such as the Phatthalung 'Red Drum' murders and the October 6, 1976 Thammasaat University massacre. Newly discovered documents show that the Americans , who partially colonized Thailand in those years, knew about the horrors.
Public inquiry into the 'Red Drum' murders
On October 14, 1973, a popular uprising, started by groups of students, ended the reign of the 'Three Tyrants': Field Marshal Thanom, Field Marshal Phrapat and their son and son-in-law Colonel Narong. A period of great freedom began. Banned books were republished, sold and read avidly. There were many strikes, peasant revolts, discussions and a certain chaos.
In the course of 1975, right-wing extremist groups such as the Village Scouts, the Red Gaurs and Nawapol, incited by the military and police, came forward to fight 'left-wing' groups, which eventually led to the mass murder at Thammasaat University (6 October 1976), a coup and renewed suppression of all freedom well into the eighties
But in the early seventies, 1973-1975, many students went into the country to educate people about their rights, about democracy and freedoms and to help them in their struggle.
For example, it came to the attention of a group of student activists working in the South that brutal murders had been committed in Phatthalung and surrounding provinces in previous years. It was Phinij Jarusombat, head of the political wing of the National Student Center of Thailand (NSCT) and a fourth-year law student at Ramkhamhaeng University who took the first messages to Bangkok and presented them to the NSCT. They arranged for survivors and witnesses to be taken to Bangkok where a lively public debate ensued about the events in Phatthalung. That was not always easy. Witnesses and activists were regularly threatened, which made Abdulmanee Abdullah remark that he lived in the anachak haeng khwaamklua, the Kingdom of Fear. Thai-language dailies like Thai Rath, Prachathipatai (Democracy), Prachachat en Siang Puangchon pay attention to it almost daily in the months of February and March 1975.
The Interior Minister, Atthasit Sitthisunthorn, set up a commission in mid-February 1975 to investigate the allegations. The commission came to the conclusion a month later that innocent civilians had indeed been killed and that government officials were responsible, but that the number of deaths was not in the hundreds or thousands, but 'only' XNUMX or XNUMX people. No one was punished. (In Thailand, there is a widespread belief that state officials can never be held accountable, unless… fill it in).
The work of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), which had been a continuation of the Communist Suppression Operations Command (CSOC) since 1973, has continued to this day. After the coup d'état of October 1976, this terrible event was covered up in Thailand.
Monument
Against the initial objections of government officials, I believe in 2003, a memorial was erected in Srinakarin district (Phatthalung) where the victims are regularly commemorated.
Source reference:
- Tyrell Haberkorn, Getting Away with Murder in Thailand State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung, University Press of Kentucky, 2013
- Prapaiparn Rathamarit, Red Drum Murders in Patthalung, Bangkok Post special publication magazine, December 15, 2006
- Matthew Zipple, Thailand's Red Drum Murders Through an Analysis of Declassified Documents, Southeast Review of Asian Studies, Volume 36 (2014 (pp. 91-111)
- Prachatai website: 'Crimes of the State: Enforced disappearance, killings and immunity', March 25, 2014
- http://prachatai.org/english/node/3904
About this blogger
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Born in 1944 in Delfzijl as the son of a simple shopkeeper. Studied in Groningen and Curacao. Worked as a doctor in Tanzania for three years, then as a general practitioner in Vlaardingen. A few years before my retirement I married a Thai lady, we had a son who speaks three languages well.
Lived in Thailand for almost 20 years, first in Chiang Kham (Phayao province) then in Chiang Mai where I liked to bother all kinds of Thai with all kinds of questions. Followed Thai extracurricular education after which a diploma of primary school and three years of secondary school. Did a lot of volunteer work. Interested in the Thai language, history and culture. Have been living in the Netherlands for 5 years now together with my son and often with his Thai girlfriend.
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1973………..2015…= 42 years + soldier age, can we assume that a certain number of those sodas are still walking around here…
Impressive story
Indeed impressive and it unfortunately seems that the label communist now concerns a different group, although not comparable to then but still…..
I remember the 80s phrase written on stickers: try my lead you dirty red.