Hear the Unheard: Seek the Light of Establishing a Peace Museum through Exhibiting Thailand Tak Bai Massacre .
Author：Patporn Phoothong
Copy Editor:Chung-Wen, Weng (Postgraduate, Graduate Institute of Museum Studies, TNUA)
On October 25, 2004, a typical weekday during Ramadan, thousands gathered in front of Tak Bai Police Station, demonstrating for the release of six security men who had been detained for over a week on suspicion of weapon theft. In the late afternoon, the Army Command ordered the suppression of the crowd by force. The brutal decision, which included water cannons and tear gas, resulted in seven people being killed and 14 officers injured After the conflict, the officers arrested more than a thousand people and forced them to remove their shirts, and then tied their hands behind their backs. The 1,370 hostages were stacked onto trucks on top of each other, and were sent to Inkatha Camp in Nong Chik District, Pattani Province. When the trucks arrived, 77 people were found dead, and one person died after being sent to the hospital. Ironically, the autopsy reports that the causes of death was “lack of food and water, asphyxiation due to chest compression, and acute kidney failure.” The tragedy is now known as the “Tak Bai Massacre,” one of the most unbearable atrocities in the Southern Border Provinces in the past 20 years.
The route where Tak Bai Massacre took place. The arrested demonstrators were stacked on to trucks and sent from Tak Bai Police Station (the spot on the bottom) to Ingkhayut Camp, resulting in 77 deaths. Some were buried at the Telok Manok Mosque and Cementery (the middle spot). （Courtesy of Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative）
Violent Conflict in Thailand’s Deep South
The “Deep South” of Thailand, primarily comprised of the three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, has a nearly 80% Malay Muslim population. contrasts sharply with the predominantly Buddhist population in the rest of Thailand. The Thai government has long suppressed local Malay culture and religion, the tension between separatist advocates and the Thai military has never eased . Since 2004, this conflict has intensified, with various separatist factions calling for autonomy, opposing human rights violations by the military, and resisting policies suppressing their cultural identity. Despite the Thai’s government efforts to revitalize economic development in the region and initiate peace negotiations, the militaristic approach has failed to address the core issues, such as identity crisis, inequality, and cultural assimilation.
Over the past two decades, the conflict has caused approximately 7,547 fatalities and 14,028 injuries. Nearly 7,000 children have been left in shelters or have become orphans, with around 1,000 orphans lacking basic governmental support due to suspicion of being related to separatists. Some have even been arrested, prosecuted, and subjected to DNA tests by 2023.
Seize the Possibility of Establishing Peace Museum
Is establishing a peace museum during an ongoing conflict a daydream? How could different stakeholders leverage peace museums? Are Museums remedies for peace? According to my research, locals in the Deep South have faith in peace museums. However, they do not wish to see their own experiences displayed locally, as it could perpetuate painful memories. Instead, they hope the museum could serve as a bridge to allow the military, politicians, and people outside Deep South to hear their voices, paving the way to mutual understanding and reconciliation.
In the Deep South, many recognize museums as playing a pivotal role in peace education. Leading a group of scholars and peace practitioners, including myself, initiated the “Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative” project in 2020. The project aims to seek reconciliation through establishing a tangible museum.
Specifically, The Tak Bai Massacre involves state violence, which made it nearly impossible to raise domestic funding. Additionally, the lack of a dedicated museum and archives to protect the data further complicates efforts to secure financing. Fortunately, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan bridged this gap and saved the project.
The project aims to reveal the hidden stories by interviewing the victims’ families. The holes and scratches on the door were left by soldiers who came to interrogate about the Tak Bai Massacre. To the mother who lost her child, the scar is a relentless reminder of her loss.
However, things did not go smoothly as hoped. The access to official documents has been prohibited, contacting the victims’ families was even more difficult. Seventeen years after the incident, those involved have remained silent for safety concerns and feelings of shame, some even moved away. Therefore, approaching the individuals involved and building trust has never been easy. Moreover, conducting interviews felt like collecting fragments and scarce traces of a bigger picture. Over the course of 17 years, the evidence became scattered, memories grew vague, and depictions varied, leading to inconsistent narratives.
To make matters worse, due to the pandemic, the research team could not travel to the Deep South, and had no choice but to rely on collecting oral histories from where the field researcher was based. With the researcher’s consistent effort, the victims’ families and the community finally opened their hearts and spoke their voices. Eventually, the researcher reached out to over 20 families of Tak Bai Massacre victims, gathered several previously unrevealed stories and hidden objects preserved by the victims’ families over 17 years .
Let the Victims’ Objects Speak
Often, individual memories, especially those of ordinary people, are perceived as unimportant, trivial, and unreliable. The project team’s mission was to transform these experiences, memories, and ordinary objects—such as clothes, banknotes, food recipes, and even bird cage—into representations beyond personal causes, and to collectively narrate state violence and injustice. With this in heart, the challenge of our first exhibition was to address violence without explicitly depicting it. Instead of structuring a sorrowful tone, we focused on providing factual information, inspiring the audience to engage in dialogue within themselves or among each other.
The curatorial team displays several objects and stories from the victims. (Left) Photos of Mr. Aduha provided by his Father. One is Aduha as a student, another is his profile photo, also as the one in government’s record of the massacre’s victim. (Right) Baba Mae preserve the gown she/he wore on the day burying the victims’ bodies. Mae no longer wears it after the traumatic event. (Courtesy of Deep South Museum)
To genuinely display victims’ objects, the team co-curated with the victims’ families alongside the field researcher. We opted to exhibit all the granted objects with respect for every piece of personal narrative. The exhibit labels were intended to maintain original wordings from the interviews. With no additional refinement, the simplest words encompassing intense feeling of life struggles, fear and hope for a better future, struck the audience with their earnest language.
Additionally, as overloaded information could undermine engagement and hinder the understanding of the massacre, we focused on building a concise and pinpointed narrative, highlighted key themes, and ensuring that the points referenced could inspire profound reflection. This approach respected both the collective trauma of the victims' families and the integrity of individual experiences.
“Hear the Unheard: Remember Tak Bai 2004”exhibition, the audience reads the label. (Courtesy of Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative)
Our first exhibition, “Heard the Unheard: Tak Bai 2004,” was launched in March 2023 at Bangkok’s Silpakorn University. Although it featured only 14 objects, it garnered significant attention from both the public and the media. Since then, the exhibition has traveled to various universities and galleries. Our most recent exhibition, “Living Memories: 20 Years Tak Bai Incident,” was held at the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre in Bangkok from March to July, 2024.
Return to the Deep South
After years of effort, the Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative received suggestions from a group of women who lost their husbands in the Tak Bai massacre, urging that the exhibition be brought back to the Deep South. They hope their families, friends, and the broader public, especially the youth, who might not know or remember the massacre, to understand and recognize their loved ones as good husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends. With objects kept for over 20 years, these items carry messages of love, loss, frustration, concerns, fear, and demands for justice. To meet the demand, the exhibition traveled to Narathiwat, where Tak Bai Massacre took place, and was displayed at a local gallery from October 10 to November 20, 2023.
A exhibit corner of De La' Pare Art Gallery. (Courtesy of Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative)
Along with the exhibition, we organized workshops for object donors to share their stories and perspectives in person. These workshops not only provided valuable feedback and suggestions for the exhibition but also enhanced understanding of the concept of a “peace museum”.
The curatorial team brought the exhibit back to the Deep South to help the local teens learn about the history. (Courtesy of Deep South Museum and Archives Initiative)
To what extent could a peace museum contribute to an ongoing conflict? Taking the 2004 Tak Bai exhibition as an example, it enhanced the volume of victims’ and survivors’ voices, encouraged audiences to reflect on and criticize human rights violations that have long been entrenched in Thai society. Most importantly, the evidence of state violence embodied in the memories of those who perished and those who continue to carry their wills. The approach not only preserves historical truth but also fosters dialogue and reflection, making the museum a crucial tool for addressing and understanding ongoing conflicts.
2024/09/29
博物之島 MUSEUMS