When the news first broke of a man shooting randomly at bystanders in a provincial shopping mall, it was greeted with disbelief by many in Thailand.
Thailand has more than its share of gun crime; gun ownership, and gunshot deaths, are among the highest in Asia. But no-one could remember a mass shooting like this before, every bit as bad as those in the United States.
By the time it was over, 30 people, including the gunman, were dead.
It began at a little after 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, at a house just outside the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, a sprawling commercial hub for Thailand’s north-eastern region.
A 32-year-old sergeant-major shot dead his commanding officer and the colonel’s mother-in-law. The three had been in business together buying and selling land, and the sergeant-major was apparently angry about not being paid for a deal he had brokered.
The gunman then went to the Surathampithak army base, a weapons and ammunition supply depot, where he worked. He shot at least one soldier, and was able to steal a truck, two assault rifles, a machine gun, and nearly 800 rounds of ammunition. He also had five guns of his own.
From there he went to a Buddhist temple, 15 minutes’ drive away, where people were marking Makha Bucha, an important Buddhist holiday. He opened fire and killed nine people there, and moved into the city centre, and the upscale, airport-themed Terminal 21 shopping mall.
At times videoing himself and streaming it to his Facebook page, he fired his assault rifle at passing cars, killing drivers and passengers. Inside the mall shoppers fled as he entered; hundreds remained trapped for many hours, sending out desperate messages on their phones.
A special police squad went in late on Saturday night, but it was another 12 hours before they were able to kill him, with one police officer shot dead.
At one level this is just another tragic instance of a man going on an inexplicable killing spree, which nobody could have foreseen. As a serving soldier he had access to lethal weapons, so the incident has not even prompted calls for tighter gun ownership regulations.
Yet there is public anger towards the government in Thailand over this.
The Twitter hashtags “Reform the Military” and “PrayuthRIP” – the latter referring to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is commonly viewed as having responded clumsily and unsympathetically to the shooting.
At an annual football game between Thailand’s two top universities students carried a banner with an acronym everyone there knew represented the phrase “With this stupid leader we will all die”.
The military has played an outsized role in Thailand throughout its modern history. It has seized power a dozen times, most recently in 2014.
The generals who led that coup are still in charge, even after an election last year; they re-wrote the constitution to ensure they held onto power. They style themselves the essential defenders of Thailand’s untouchable monarchy, deterring or crushing opposition with accusations of
disloyalty.
The military is essentially unaccountable to civilian authority, with its own courts, and fast-rising spending that remains un-transparent.
A militarised society
Thai society sometimes seems militarised; civilian security guards routinely give military salutes, civil servants sometimes take part in military-style parades, and the police sport paramilitary paraphernalia; it is not uncommon to see an immigration officer at the airport wearing the
silver parachute wings of an elite commando.
Every year Thailand’s Children’s Day in January is centred on army bases, where young children can play with guns and tanks.
