The memorial is, however, fundamentally ambivalent. On the
one hand, it acknowledges political struggle as part of national history;
on the other, it sets the limits of the public representation of
those events by emphasizing the ‘triumph’ of October 1973, when
the throne stood on the students’ side, over the military reaction of
1976, which enjoyed the throne’s support. In other words, public
commemoration was allowed on condition that the uncomfortable
implications of the Thammasat University massacre would not be
raised. The task of perpetuating public memory of what in Thai is
colloquially known as hok tula (6 October) was taken up in recent
years by some of those who experienced that event, even though
others have chosen to forgive – and forget. On the twentieth
anniversary of the student massacre, a symbolic cremation for the
forty-three official victims was staged on Thammasat University’s
central lawn. A prominent historian who had been one of the
student leaders in 1976 and was now an organizer of the 1996
commemoration reflected thus on the interplay of amnesia and
amnesty in the event’s aftermath: ‘It remains to be seen if, and in
what ways, the memories of the massacre in the broader context of
recent Thai history have really changed, and in what ways ambivalence
remains among the culprits and the victims.