On October 6, 1976, the army of Thailand established a new open military dictatorship. For an entire year, the Thai general staff and the American secret services had been stepping up acts of provocation or terror and had been waging an intense intoxication campaign, creating paramilitary far right movements for this purpose. They had to put an end to the rise of activity of the student, worker, and peasant masses that followed the advances of the Indochinese revolution and the fall of the previous dictatorship under the pressure of the October 1973 popular uprising.
The massacre of students at Tammassat University on October 7 and the severity of the measures taken since then must leave no doubt as to the intentions of the dictatorship and its imperialist masters. Dozens of students have been lynched, murdered, sometimes hanged and burned alive. Arrests now number in the thousands. The press is muzzled and all the democratic rights won by the masses in three years are drowned in blood. Part of the Vietnamese population living in Thailand has been rounded up into concentration camps and is in great danger. The objective of the coup is clear: to break the urban and rural mass movement; to halt the rise of worker and peasant struggles in a lasting manner; to prepare a sweeping offensive against the Communist party guerrillas; to make Thailand a more effective base of action for imperialism and a bastion against the Indochinese revolution.
The importance of the evolution of the situation in Thailand need not be demonstrated. After American imperialism's defeat in Indochina and the opening of a period of growing social agitation in the rest of Southeast Asia, the stakes in the struggle now going on in this country are considerable. Active solidarity must be developed with those who are continuing the fight against the dictatorship under extremely difficult conditions. Such solidarity can save the lives of many of those imprisoned and stay the criminal hand of the new dictatorship. The greatest publicity must be given to these events and to the responsibilities of the imperialist powers — in particular the U.S. and Japan — in this coup.
The Fourth International calls for stepping up worldwide solidarity, for an immediate halt to the torture and acts of terror, for the immediate release of all political prisoners, and for support to the struggle against the dictatorship.
October 17, 1976