A Tale of Two Amnesties: 6 October 1976 and the misplacement of accountability in Thailand

GUEST LECTURE by Tyrell Haberkorn

Monday 8 April 2013, 14:15-16:00, at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Snorresgade 17-19, Room U4

Tyrell Haberkorn is research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change (Australian National University). She is author to Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand (2011) and is currently doing research on impunity and state violence in Thailand.

In the guest lecture she will be discussing the two amnesty laws that were passed after the 6 October 1976 massacre 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 the 18 people still undergoing criminal prosecution and dismissed the charges against them.

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, the guest lecture will be considering the location of accountability for state violence in Thailand. What are the legal mechanics through which violent actors escape punishment? And, what are the legal and political functions of forgiveness when no crime has been committed? Finally, what is the history of these two amnesty laws? Or to put it differently, can a resonance of the elision of responsibility and the misplacement of accountability for this massacre be read in the present?