A grieving nation wants answers to familiar questions
Sharp focus on guns, drugs and the mental health of security forces in wake of nursery massacre
The massacre at a Thai nursery is reviving the dread and sorrow Chanathip has attempted to bury for more than two years. The 36-year-old teacher survived Thailand’s last mass killing by barricading a shopping centre toilet to keep out a rampaging soldier and save his toddler – and a dozen others – from harm.
The February 2020 attack in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima was committed by Jakrapanth Thomma, 32, an army sergeant-major who killed 29 and wounded scores more with automatic weapons after an apparent business dispute with a senior officer.
Last Thursday, Panya Kamrab, a 34-year-old former police sergeant fired earlier this year for drug offences, killed 36 people – among them 24 young children sleeping at a nursery school in the rural northeastern village of Uthai Sawan – in a shockingly violent spree using a gun and a knife.
[Police] work without full support of their superiors, they regularly buy their own pistols
KRISANAPHONG POOTHAKOOL, ACADEMIC
Separated by more than two years, hundreds of kilometres and the specifics of their targets and motivations, the two mass killings are still linked by the profile of attackers with years in uniform, targeting the very civilians they were trained to protect.
“Nothing has changed,” said Chanathip, who spent several harrowing hours with his family hidden in a toilet at the Terminal 21 shopping centre on February 9, 2020, as Jakrapanth stalked the concourses, killing indiscriminately as he went.
“When I learned it was an ex-policeman who carried out the nursery attack, I thought, ‘When will they ever have stricter gun laws for these men in uniform? When will these men ever get support for their mental health?’”.
In death, Jakrapanth, fatally shot by security forces, and Panya, who killed himself after murdering his wife and stepson, took with them any hope of justice or explanation of why they chose to massacre innocents.
Both left bereft families and a shocked country to wrestle with questions over gun control, drugs, mental health and why it is men in uniform who have carried out the worst atrocities in Thailand’s recent history.
On Sunday, the Royal Thai Police (RTP) issued a statement saying Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had ordered them “to urgently suppress crimes related to drugs and guns” to build public trust.
Thailand is awash with guns, both legally held and illegal, with war weapons moving through porous borders with Cambodia and Myanmar.
The country is also a major market and transit point for methamphetamine, with millions hooked on the caffeine-laced version, known as “yaba”, and the more addictive crystal meth, or Ice. Health experts say both are devastating to the mental health of long-term users.
Among the police measures included a crackdown on people with gun licences but with “bad track records”, the statement on the RTP official Facebook page said, adding that youth gangs, neighbourhood mafias and loan sharks would be targeted.
Drug checkpoints and border controls would be tightened, the statement said, while random urine tests for all police officers would help identify drug users with the threat of “serious consequences” for those who tested positive.
Thailand has some 220,000 police and 450,000 soldiers marshalling its 70 million population. The army has refused to let power settle for long in the hands of civilians, leading 13 successful coups in less than a century and embedding military culture in all aspects of state security.
“The police structure is strongly hierarchical, with a military-style chain-of-command that puts a lot of pressure on frontline officers,” said Krisanaphong Poothakool, a criminologist at Bangkok’s Rangsit University and former RTP lieutenant-colonel.
“They work without full support of their superiors, they regularly buy their own pistols, radios and petrol, which gives them cause for corruption and bribery and other minor crimes … but minor crimes can lead to major ones.”
Away from mass killings – which are rare – rights groups allege serious abuse by security forces, ranging from torture and murder in custody by police, to the extrajudicial killings by army personnel of drug suspects or suspected rebels on the southern border with Malaysia.
Shootings by officers, enraged by jealousy, business conflict or perceived slights, including by foreigners, are not uncommon.
Public outcry has mounted over nursery killer Panya’s police career despite numerous run-ins with superiors and previous complaints of discharging his weapon unlawfully.
As grief-stricken parents mourned over the tiny coffins of Panya’s victims in Uthai Sawan, Chanathip’s memories of the horrors of the 2020 massacre in Nakhon Ratchasima came flooding back. But so did his anger at a culture that he says gifts impunity and power from the moment a uniform is taken.
“It’s like they’re putting on one of those Ramayana masks,” he said, referring to the Hindu epic; Thailand has been strongly influenced by the religion.
“They’re automatically different people, they think they’re privileged, invisible and can’t be touched.”