Tak Bai

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

For almost two decades, successive governments have failed to bring the security forces to justice for the unlawful deaths at Tak Bai. Finally, earlier this year, just months before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires, seven former police and military officers were charged with the murder of the Tak Bai victims. However, there has been no attempt to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them. The court has announced that it will simply wait until midnight on 25th October for the seven men to present themselves voluntarily and, if they choose not to hand themselves in, the cases against them will be dropped.

The injustice of Tak Bai is heartbreaking, though sadly not unusual in Thailand. At the time of the Tak Bai incident, the government even prohibited footage of the event from being broadcast on television, though the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD, ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’), in defiance of the ban. Tak Bai footage also appears in two documentaries: This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, and 18 Years by Prempapat Plittapolkranpim. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

Teerawat Rujenatham’s powerful short film Tak Bai also includes Tak Bai footage, which is played during the end credits, and the final images are shots of the shrouded bodies of the victims. But what makes Teerawat’s film unique is that, for the first time, he dramatises the brutal events of that day. Actors playing Tak Bai protesters are shown being stacked on top of each other in the back of a truck, and we see one man in closeup as he struggles to breathe, emphasising the suffocating claustrophobia endured by all those held captive.

Teerawat’s film was shown on 19th October at TK Park in Narathiwat, as part of the Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน) exhibition. According to one of the organisers of the event, the Tak Bai victims’ relatives in the audience found Teerawat’s film hard to watch. It was screened unexpectedly, instead of the advertised film, Walai Buppha’s documentary 20 Years Later. Tak Bai will be shown today at the Sukosol Hotel in Bangkok as part of the one-day #ตากใบต้องไม่เงียบ (‘Tak Bai must not be silenced’) event. It will also be shown at the embassy of the Netherlands in Bangkok tomorrow at the Takbai 20th Year Memorization: Fighting Against Impunity and Upholding the Rule of Law (จดจำ 20 ปี ตากใบ การต่อสู้กับการลอยนวลพ้นผิดและการธำรงไว้ซึ่งหลักนิติธรรม) event, at the Sol Bar Talk Special: Movie Night (คืนนี้ ไม่มีความยุติธรรม ให้ตากใบ) in Bangkok on 25th October, and at Patani Artspace on 25th October at the Genab 20 Tahun Peristiwa Tak Bai (‘20 years since Tak Bai’) event.

Tak Bai was previously screened at the Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ) exhibition last year. Other exhibitions commemorating Tak Bai include รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’), Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน), Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่), Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก), and 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim. The victims’ names are listed in Teerawat’s film, and in two installations: Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม).