Many of you will recognize this as the image from the cover of the "Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia". A song which makes reference to the atrocities being commited by the Khmer Rouge at that time. However, the picture was in fact taken 40 years ago today, in a day that Thailand still has difficulty accepting or talking about.

A crowd looks on, some children with smiles on their faces, as a man uses a folding chair to beat the dead and hanging body of a student outside the university.

The original image-source Bangkokpost.com

The Thammasat University Massacre, Thailand 1976.

This image has become the most recognized reminder of the brutal crackdown against pro-democracy students that took place 40 years ago today. The leftist students were opposing the return of Thailand to a former Dictator. During the protest, State-sanctioned forces and right-wing royalist mobs shot, hanged and beat to death dozens of students and other demonstrators. The students were accused attempting to incite revolutions such as those which were sweeping through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

"Official figures put the death toll at 46, with 167 wounded and more than 3,000 students arrested. The death toll is disputed to this day, with survivors putting it at more like 100." (Time Magazine)

Decades later and still nobody has been held accountable for what happened that day, and in fact it is a sensitive topic to even mention. Many of the military personnel involved have indeed been granted amnesty since. Perhaps Thailand needs to start accepting and taking responsibility for its past if it hopes to have a future.

You can read more about it here