Tyrell Haberkorn

AN UNFINISHED PAST: Assassination and the 1974 Land Rent Control Act in Northern Thailand

This article examines the struggle for land tenancy reform and the assassination of Farmers’ Federation of Thailand (FFT) leaders in northern Thailand during the period of democratic politics between 14 October 1973 and 6 October 1976 as unresolved, ambiguous, and linked events in the recent Thai past. During the 1973–1976 period, farmers became new political and legal subjects as they fought to pass and then implement the 1974 Land Rent Control Act. Drawing on provincial archival records, the author contextualizes how and why tenancy became a contentious issue between farmers and landlords beginning in the 1950s and then examines the anxious and violent backlash with which their organizing in the 1970s was met by state, para-state, right-wing, and landholding elites. The author interrogates the conditions and effects of the assassinations by writing about the life and death of one of the leaders of the FFT, Intha Sribunruang. The denials by a range of state officials of the political nature of Intha and other FFT leaders’ murders underscore both the importance of the FFTs work and the necessity to critically evaluate the assassinations. The author concludes by arguing that the lack of resolution surrounding the struggle for tenancy reform and the assassinations of FFT leaders continues to resonate in present-day politics. An Appendix to the article offers the first English-language list of the FFT leaders known to have been killed or victimized by violence between 1974 and 1979.

Engendering Sedition: Ethel Rosenberg, Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul, and the Courage of Refusal

Abstract:On April 5, 1951, Ethel Rosenberg was sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring to commit espionage and sell US atomic information to the Soviet Union. On August 28, 2009, Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for allegedly insulting the royal family of Thailand. By bringing the suffering and courageous actions of these two women into conversation across time and space, the nature of national crisis and the impossibility of loyal dissent in the Cold War United States and late reign Rama IX Thailand are refracted and made acutely visible. Taking the disjuncture between the severity of the charges and the paucity of the evidence presented as a point of departure, this article interrogates the legal instruments under which Ethel Rosenberg and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul were charged, namely the US Espionage Act of 1917 and Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code; the logic of the courts which convicted them; and the public discourse surrounding both trials. Developing sedition as a lens of comparison and a strategy of analysis, their actions are examined as transgressive in three intersecting and overlapping registers: law, dissent in excess of the law, and gender performance. A fourth register of sedition—scholarly work that aims to be seditious—offers the possibility of challenging the strictures of crisis in which dehumanizing and disproportionate punishment, such as that experienced by Ethel Rosenberg and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul, becomes possible.

The hidden transcript of amnesty: the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup in Thailand

ABSTRACT There were two, not one, amnesty laws passed in relation to the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University and coup in Thailand. The first amnesty law, passed on 24 December 1976, legalized the coup and prevented those who created the conditions for the coup and seized power on the evening of 6 October from being held to account. The second amnesty law, passed on 16 September 1978, freed eighteen student activists still undergoing criminal prosecution and dismissed the charges against them. Although neither amnesty mentioned the massacre, the urgency of producing and then safeguarding impunity for the state and para-state actors behind the violence at Thammasat was the absent presence in both laws. Combining a close reading of both laws with examination of archival documents about the drafting of the first amnesty law and court and other records related to the second, this article uncovers the hidden transcripts of both amnesty laws as a point of departure for examining questions about impunity, law, and history. First, what are the legal mechanics through which violent actors escape accountability? Second, what are the legal and political functions of amnesty when no crime has been committed? Third and finally, might accountability for past violence be possible, and if so, under what conditions? The answers to these questions illuminate how impunity was produced in the specific case of the 6 October 1976 massacre in Thailand as well as address broader concerns about impunitys role in state formation.

When Torture is a Duty: The Murder of Imam Yapa Kaseng and the Challenge of Accountability in Thailand

Abstract On 19 March 2008, Imam Yapa Kaseng was arrested in Narathiwat in southern Thailand and detained as a suspected insurgent by Special Task Force 39 under the provisions of martial law and the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in an Emergency Situation (hereafter Emergency Decree). Two days after his arrest, he died in the custody of the army. On 25 December 2008, the Narathiwat Provincial Court ruled that “the cause of death is that the deceased was physically assaulted by state officials … while he was in the custody of soldiers who were performing their civil service duties”. This ruling is paradoxical: Thai state officials are named as responsible for a death in custody, yet torture is categorised as a “duty”. Since the ruling, Imam Yapa’s family has pursued criminal, civil and internal state methods of redress, but the case has been stalled and the responsible state officials have not been held accountable. In response, I challenge this paradox by reading the inquest decision in light of both relevant national and international legal instruments and the testimonies given during the hearings. Drawing on the testimonies given during the inquest hearings, I construct an alternative narrative of suffering and state accountability.

Dictatorship as occupation in Thailand

ABSTRACT On 22 May 2014, a junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) launched the 12th coup in Thailand since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The NCPOs rule consolidated into a dictatorship marked by sweeping arrests, arbitrary detention, the criminalization of political participation, and use of military courts to prosecute dissidents. During the three years of rule by the NCPO, the repression of dictatorship has intensified during the royal transition from Rama IX to Rama X. Concerned with the ongoing crisis of rights violations and lack of clear signs of a transition from dictatorship to democracy, this article proposes analyzing the current Thai regime as a form of occupation. The occupation is characterized by the arbitrary exercise of law, citizen complicity, and persistent fear, particularly around Article 112, the law criminalizing lèse majesté. Drawing on the work of Eyal Benvenisti, the article first outlines the broad contours of occupation, then turns to a specific instance of injustice in the exercise of Article 112, next examines the foundational inequality behind citizen complicity in the regime, and finally, reflects on the urgency of analysis given the ongoing expansion of fear and uncertainty.

The Anniversary of a Massacre and the Death of a Monarch

As part of this years anniversary of the October 6, 1976, massacre at Thammasat University, an outdoor exhibit of photographs of the violence and the three preceding years of student and other social movements was displayed upon the very soccer field in the center of campus where students were beaten, shot, lynched, and murdered forty years prior. Several of the photographs were printed on large sheets of acrylic and positioned such that the images of the buildings in the photographs were aligned with the actual buildings, which remain largely unchanged. The most striking of these was a photograph of hundreds of students stripped to the waist who were lying face down on the soccer field prior to being arrested and taken away. At the edge of the image was the top of the universitys iconic dome building, which lined up with the existing building. The organizers explained that their intention was “to reflect a perspective on the past through the eyes of people in the present in order to show the cruelty of humans to one another.” The proximity generated by the image was underlined by the fact that the fortieth anniversary of the massacre and coup in 1976 that led to twelve years of dictatorship was taking place under yet another dictatorship, that of a military junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which seized power on May 22, 2014, in the twelfth coup since the end of the absolute monarchy on June 24, 1932. Suchada Chakphisut, founding editor of Sarakadee magazine and Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism, who was a first-year Thammasat student during the massacre, began her autobiographical account of the day, written for the anniversary this year, by writing: “We meet every year when 6 October comes around, and with it an inexplicable sadness always takes hold of my psyche. It has grown even more devastating since the 22 May 2014 coup, in which we must face the news of the arrest and detention of activists and those who oppose dictatorship.” This was not a commemoration after dictatorship such as those of the same era held in Argentina or Chile during recent years of democratization, but memories of dictatorship in situ.

Court vs. Crown in Thailand

As the third anniversary of the May 22, 2014, coup by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) approaches, there are few signs of an end to military rule in Thailand. NCPO has used—and abused—the law and the civilian and military courts to repress dissident speech and political action. Ironically, it is the courts—the very sites where repression is codified—where activists are also presenting the deepest challenges to military rule. Activists with Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), a group established in the first week following the coup, document human rights violations and provide legal defense to those accused of political crimes. LHR’s growing record of these excesses awaits the end of military rule and is a necessary gesture towards a return to democracy and the rule of law.

A Hyper-Royalist Parapolitics in Thailand

In the years since the 19 September 2006 coup, there has been a resurgence in prosecutions under Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, the measure which criminalizes and provides for harsh penalties for alleged lese majeste. One of the striking features of recent court decisions in Article 112 cases is that judges have gone beyond the boundaries of law to justify the convictions, and developed a jurisprudence that centres on monarchical heritage. Right-wing citizens have taken similar ideas as a justification to engage in violence against those with whom they disagree. This article develops a framework—hyper-royalist parapolitics—to examine an attack on law activists, a Criminal Court decision, and a Constitutional Court comment which represent this new political form, and to query the broader transformations they signal in the Thai polity. The article concludes with reflections on the framework in light of the 22 May 2014 coup.