Activists join city trail to remember Oct 6 victims

Yesterday’s events, which started in the morning and finished in the evening, saw the participants pay tributes to the students and attend symbolic expressions and talks.

In the morning at Thammasat University’s Tha Phrachan campus, a commemoration was held at the Sculpture Park, attended by relatives of the victims and various groups such as the Heroes of Democracy Foundation, the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and the October Network Group.

Nakarin Mektrairat, deputy rector of the university’s administration department, led the crowd in presenting alms to monks and laying flowers to commemorate the massacre, in which students were shot and killed by ultra-rightist groups. 

Thongchai Winichakul, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was a student at the time, gave a speech during in which he said that if we wanted to honour those who lost their lives as victims, we should get the history resolved.

Afterwards, some of the activists made the symbolic gesture of wrapping the tamarind trees opposite the university with black cloth. 

The October students were believed to have been hanged from these trees. 

Prapatsorn Thongsin, a relative of a victim, said he joined the event to commemorate his brother and his friends, who believed in democracy. Forty years have passed and the families are still sad when they think about the events of that day, he said, and they have still not seen much change in society.

After the memorial session, the organisers and the relatives of the victims held a meeting to discuss next year’s commemoration. 

They hope the 40th-anniversary event will gain more recognition and attention from the public. Nevertheless, no concrete plans have yet been made.

Another group, calling themselves Resistant Citizens, also held a series of events at the same spot in the evening. They read poetry and had a candle-lighting ceremony to commemorate the October students at the tamarind trees.

At the Thammasat University Rangsit Campus, a talk on nationalism and ideologies was scheduled by the Thammasat students’ union as part of the commemoration.

In the afternoon, a 10-member anti-coup group known as the New Democracy Movement gathered coincidentally in front of Parliament to read a statement and make some symbolic gestures to show their opposition to the new Constitution Drafting Committee, which held its first meeting yesterday. 

The group said the new charter would serve only to empower the junta and it would undermine democracy.