Authorities Blame Drugs for the Nursery Massacre. Others Blame the Authorities.

Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence against children.

“He was a drug addict.”

It was less than 24 hours earlier that this “drug addict” walked into a pre-school daycare center in the northeastern town of Uthai Sawan with a knife and a handgun. There, he murdered 23 children, some of whom were sleeping, mostly by stabbing them with a meat cleaver. Then he went home, killed his wife and child, and turned his weapon on himself. His rampage left 37 innocent people dead. 

The killer—whom VICE World News has chosen not to name—was a former police corporal who was discharged from duty in June for drug use, and attended a court hearing on a narcotics charge shortly before arriving at the childcare center.

His subsequent rampage ranks as not only one of the world's most deadly child massacres by a single killer in recent history, but also the most deadly massacre by a single killer that Thailand has ever seen. The second-deadliest occurred in February 2020, when Jakrapanth Thomma, a soldier in the Thai army, killed 29 people and injured 58 more after opening fire at multiple locations in a two-day, live-streamed mass shooting known as Korat. Jakrapanth was eventually killed by police. 

But while officials have been eager to push the narrative of a drug-addled killer in the wake of Thursday’s tragedy, many people have highlighted a more troubling trend; Thailand’s two most recent mass killings were both perpetrated by current or former uniformed figures—individuals entrusted with protecting the public, and given legal access to firearms to do so. 

The warning signs of a deadly trend are growing. In June 2021, an ex-soldier opened fire at a COVID field hospital in southern Thailand, killing one patient. Just last month, another soldier shot three of his colleagues at a military facility in Bangkok, killing two and wounding one. Some are now questioning whether a systemic, institutional problem within the police and military may also be to blame for what appears to be a disturbing pattern of violence emerging from their ranks. 

“Is it time to reform these institutions? To reveal what problems lie hidden within,” Thanawat “Ball” Wongchai, a pro-democracy activist known for his vocal disapproval of the military-aligned government, said on Thursday, in a tweet that has garnered over 68,000 retweets and 15,600 likes.

“[The Nong Bua Lamphu attack] should be the last tragedy. It's time to examine and fix the issues that have been swept under the rug for too long to prevent incidents like this from ever happening again.”

The date of this week’s preschool massacre, Oct. 6, is a conspicuous one. It marked the 46th anniversary of one of the darkest days in Thai history, the 1976 Thammasat Massacre. That day, Thai police and right-wing paramilitaries killed 40 leftist protestors at Thammasat University in Bangkok, lynching many of them. 

As Thailand gains a second reason to mourn this date, rather than respond with introspection about the violent culture that pervades Thailand’s military and law enforcement institutions, the country’s military-aligned government has pushed a monocausal explanation of Thursday’s events. Just hours after the attack, Prawit Wongsuwan, Thailand’s first deputy prime minister, seemed most interested in explaining the attack as simply  “caused by drugs.”

“We will learn from this in order to implement better measures that tackle the root of the problems, which includes eradicating drugs from our communities and treating those that are addicted,” he told reporters on Friday morning. “The government has continuously been working on this. Our main policies are to eradicate drugs and arrest those that are selling it.”

On Thursday, newly appointed police chief Damrongsak Kittiprapas also suggested that the attacker might have been using narcotics when he carried out the massacre, adding that he displayed behaviors associated with methamphetamine use. 

“The police department has to learn from this in order to prevent incidents like this from happening again. We have to test people with a history of drug use,” he said.

His addiction to methamphetamine has been widely cited, apparently even by his own mother, with a national police chief claiming she had said she witnessed him consume drugs and then enter a paranoid state after leaving court on Thursday morning. However, crucially, initial autopsy results on Friday found no evidence that the attacker had consumed drugs within 72 hours of the killing spree. 

According to Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee, an associate professor who specializes in contemporary Thai politics at Chulalongkorn University, while gun control and drug use were both factors in Thursday’s tragedy, the real problem may be more systemic. 

“It’s not surprising that the attacker has been using drugs because it's very accessible, the combination of drugs and weapons leading to violence like this—I think it's not a surprise,” she told VICE World News, describing the lower ranks of the police as being in close proximity to the local drugs scene. 

“But the surprise is why the police and the military organization haven't realized [that this is a problem] and haven't addressed it properly,” she said. “I think that's the root of the problem.”

Her thoughts are echoed by some politicians and members of Thai civil society, who are already using Thursday’s attack to call for reforms to the police force. 

Wiroj Lakkhanaadisorn, a politician from the progressive Move Forward Party—vocal critics of Thailand’s military-aligned government and the subject of dissolution threats by the Constitutional Court for its calls for reform of Thailand’s monarchy—said recent massacres taken together might indicate “unspoken problems” within the military and police force.

“From the [Korat shooting] that happened on February 8, 2020, to the [Bangkok military facility shooting] that just happened on September 14, 2022, the perpetrator has been part of the military or [former] police,” he wrote in a Facebook statement on Thursday afternoon. “These are occupations with legal rights to hold a gun.”

“This goes to show that there must be so many unspoken problems within the military circle. This may be mental illness, injustice from those in higher positions or pressures from assignments outside of their civic duty and human rights principle.”

The public image of Thai military and law enforcement institutions is frequently sullied by controversy, from reports of degrading, at times deadly, military hazing rituals, to obscene corruption by senior police and deaths in custody. In these institutions, senior officials are known to act with impunity, taking advantage of their lower-ranking subordinates. 

The motive of the man behind the 2020 Korat shooting was concluded as “injustice at the hands of his commanders and relatives.” He had apparently been cheated by his superiors in a property deal. But in the wake of the two-day massacre, which sent alarm bells ringing across the country, no concrete military reform policies were introduced and talk of reform evaporated. 

But beneath sympathetic statements and condolences, people are noting missteps in the government’s response to the tragedy. On Friday, officials laid out a red carpet in front of the childcare center—where just one day ago dozens were brutally murdered—in anticipation of the visit of “VVIPs”, including prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and controversial monarch King Maha Vajiralongkorn, only to be rolled back up after photos of the inappropriately grand setup circulated on social media and attracted public criticism.

Then, Prayut arrived with a media crew, instructing the family of victims to hold up signs showing how much compensation they would receive from the government for the killings. 

With the incumbent government gearing up for the general election, scheduled for May next year, Siripan thinks that it’s unlikely that the government will be implementing major reforms. Much like Korat, after the dust settles on the tragedy, Thailand may see little changes in how its military and police operate. 

“The public has a very low trust of the government… [even] before this incident happened. I think this [attack] would aggravate public anger towards the government,” said Siripan. “Because it's close to the election, [the government] might try to propose something.” 

“A symbolic promise to cool down public anger, that is possible. But a real and meaningful reform, I cannot foresee at this point.”

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