Historians jog buried memories of Thai massacre

This photograph taken on September 23, 2017 shows Chumpol Thummai praying to the abandoned gate where his left-wing activist brother was lynched by Thai royalists, an incident that led to the October 6, 1976 Thammasat University massacre, in the central Thai province of Nakhon Pathom. -AFP

NAKHON PATHOM: Tears flow freely as Chumpol Thummai stands in front of the rusty gate where his brother was lynched by royalists 41 years ago, an act that set off a chain of events that ended in a student massacre.

The bloodshed was one of the darkest chapters in Thailand’s violence-flecked modern history, a century that has seen the kingdom lurch between military dictatorships and democratic rule.