THAILAND Bangkok wants to try eight officials for the 2004 Tak Bai massacre

The judges are targeting his role in the deaths of 78 young Muslims locked inside military vehicles. The incident took place in the far south of the country, a scene of separatist and sectarian tensions for decades. However, the case has expired and risks rekindling the confrontation between the ruling party and the military and nationalist establishment.

Bangkok () – Eight security officials will be tried for their role in the Tak Bai massacre, in which 78 young Muslims were killed in military vehicles on 25 October 2004, for alleged subversive activities in the restive south of Thailand. A decision that comes almost 20 years after the event that made official claims for dialogue with elusive and often unrepresentative counterparts irreconcilable, as demonstrated by the stalemate in talks to date; but which, at the same time, further highlighted the intransigent and colonial nature of Bangkok’s control over the far south, in the four provinces (Songkhla, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat) with a majority or substantially Muslim presence, heirs to a sultanate that once extended even over vast areas of present-day Malaysia.

Twenty years ago, following protests that erupted in Tak Bai, Narathiwat province, over the attempted arrest of six suspected local militants, the army and police intervened by force, killing seven protesters, arresting 1,300 and loading large numbers of them, one on top of the other, into trucks. Dozens died of suffocation in the sun and unable to free themselves. The then government led by Thaksin Shinawatra, to whose government experience the Pheu Thai led by his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra now looks, had expressed its condolences for the incident, but denied any direct responsibility. At the same time, the police had tried to fuel the theory of the existence of armed extremists among the arrested protesters.

The massacre marked the start of a new escalation of the long-running low-intensity conflict in the far south between local separatist groups and security forces, which had led to prolonged periods of state of emergency. The result has been, on the one hand, repression and, on the other, devastating demonstrations in the heart of Bangkok, which have claimed the lives of 7,600 people to date.

The announcement of the prosecution of the alleged perpetrators of the crime, now on the verge of the statute of limitations, came after relatives of the victims filed a complaint last month against seven individuals belonging to the security forces. However, only one of them appears on the list presented by the Attorney General. “The suspects should have foreseen that their actions would lead to the suffocation and death of the 78 people under their care,” said the spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, Prayut Bejaguran, at a press conference held on Wednesday.

It is significant that the Pheu Thai-led governments in power since last year (the first in coalition with the largest pro-military party, the second with the Democratic Party’s former historical opponents) have come to this point. As well as establishing the prosecution of those responsible for the latest coups, if they are officially denounced. The party’s traditional hostility towards the armed forces, the need to achieve greater cohesion of the population in its government initiatives and to achieve greater consensus in southern Thailand are beginning to become clear. On the other hand, there are many who fear that this could revive the confrontation with the military establishment and nationalist forces that in the past, most recently in September 2006 and May 2014, encouraged and preceded direct military control over the country.