Time runs out for justice in Thailand’s Tak Bai massacre

Statute of limitations in the case expired on Friday, but memory of the 2004 atrocity lives on in the Thai Deep South.

Commentary by Don Pathan
BenarNews

It was always a long shot but Malay Muslims in Thailand’s southern border region never gave up hope that the government would amend the criminal code to extend the 20-year statute of limitations in the infamous Tak Bai massacre.

Artef Sohko, president of The Patani, protested in front of the Thai Army camp in
Yala, Thailand, on Oct. 24, 2024. 

They hoped that all 14 suspects, now retired government officials, could be brought to justice for the deaths of 85 unarmed protesters in Tak Bai on Oct. 25, 2004. The statute expired on Friday without any of the suspects being taken into custody, although there were warrants out for their arrest.  

During the past weeks, there were relentless demonstrations and seminars about the incident. These included a Senate hearing and a public protest in front of a military base in Yala province, where people demanded that the government amend the criminal code and demonstrate its commitment to justice. 

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and her Cabinet members sought comfort in the legal procedures, saying these requests must be examined thoroughly and that due process must be observed. While apologizing to victims’ relatives on Thursday, she said it would be constitutionally impossible to extend the statute of limitations in the Tak Bai case beyond Oct. 25.

No one wanted to acknowledge the political underpinnings of the incident, or how the country’s justice system and international standing were at stake. 

Of the 85 victims, seven were shot dead at the protest site. The rest suffocated to death while stacked up like logs in the back of military trucks, after being rounded up and detained. 

They were among nearly 1,400 demonstrators calling for the release of six village security personnel, who were accused by police of willingly handing their government-issued weapons to separatist insurgents.The massacre happened during the holy month of Ramadan, considered sacred by Muslims. 

Gen. Pisarn Wattanawongkiri, the region’s highest military commander who was at the demonstration site, was quickly reassigned. He would retire from the Royal Thai Army honorably some years later. 

Shortly after the killings, a shaky video clip of the incident circulated widely. It showed protesters being kicked and struck with the butts of rifles, as they were forced to crawl into the trucks. 

The message to them and to the Malay Muslims, who make up about 85% of the 2 million residents of this historically contested region, was clear: You’re a defeated people, and there isn’t much you can do but learn how to live with this reality; don’t forget that challenging the authorities comes with a heavy price. The message was rejected outright, of course.

The Tak Bai massacre became part of a powerful narrative, not only for the local Malay Muslims because it reinforced their historical mistrust of the Thai state, but for the separatist insurgents who would use it in their recruitment drive.

In what was billed as a gesture of goodwill, then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a “peace bombing” campaign to assuage the fury of the Malays in the border region.

He asked the country’s people to fold origami birds, which were dropped from the military planes across the far south. Collecting 20 paper cranes entitled one to a carton of milk. 

Despite the intention, the peace bombings baffled both the militants and the Muslims, who offered an entirely different interpretation of the birds. 

The Islamic understanding of dropping birds is battle, the late opposition MP Surin Pitsuwan, a Muslim, told the Parliament floor. He pointed to Sura 105 of the Quran, (Al-Fil, the Elephant), in which God sends down “birds in flocks” on his enemies to flatten them like blades of grass. 

Leaflet of one of the 14 wanted suspects posted in Bangkok

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who was installed by a junta after Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 coup, apologized to the family members of the Tak Bai victims during a town hall meeting in Pattani province in 2007. 

But the Thai state and society didn’t feel the need to build on Surayud’s apology. There was no public monument or official event to commemorate the tragic event. 

In May 2009, the Songkhla Provincial Court ruled that security officials who were sent to break up the Tak Bai protest had acted within their duties and that 78 of the victims had died from suffocation. In other words, they died as a result of unfortunate circumstances rather than intentional acts.  Nothing was said about the seven others who were shot dead on site. 

In 2012, the then-government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra – Thaksin’s younger sister – provided compensation of 7.5 million baht (U.S. $ 222,028) to the families of each of the victims.

However, financial compensation was not the same as justice, no matter how hard the Thai officials and Thaksin’s political allies wanted it to be. 

This past August and September, a Thai court decided to try the cases and bring murder charges against 14 men, from military Gen. Pisarn to the drivers of the transport trucks. For some it was a chance for justice; for others, it was an opportunity for closure, to heal the wound and move on as a nation.

The militants had resurfaced in mid-2001, after a decade-long hiatus. But their presence was not officially recognized by Thaksin’s government until they pulled off a major arms heist from a military weapons depot in Narathiwat province, where Tak Bai is located, in January 2004.

Twenty years later, more than 7,500 people have been killed from insurgency-related violence, and the end is still nowhere in sight despite several attempts at negotiations with the rebels. 

Peace initiatives have never moved beyond confidence-building measures. With the military and conservative establishment in a firm place after a Faustian deal with the ruling Pheu Thai Party, the peace negotiation is likely to be even more difficult than in the past. 

As the 20th anniversary of the incident approached, violence in the far south spiked. But this year’s attacks were much more vicious, perhaps because the statute of limitations in the Tak Bai incident was going to expire, and because separatist militants needed to remind the country – particularly Thai security forces in the heavily militarized Deep South – the case was far from being closed. 

Today’s ruling party, the Pheu Thai, an offshoot of Thai Rak Thai, is headed by 38-year-old Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn. Pisarn became a senior member of the party and an MP until his resignation on Oct. 14, seemingly to distance the ruling party from the case. 

Like others who have been charged by the Thai court in August, Pisarn is nowhere to be found. The same could be said about national reconciliation. 

Don Pathan is a Thailand-based security analyst. The views expressed in this column are his own and do not reflect the position of BenarNews.

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