Thai youth still fight for dissent 50 years after massacre

Fifty years after a student demonstration against dictatorship ended in a massacre, Thailand's latest generation of protesters say they still face threats including prosecution, jail or exile. Nutthanit Duangmusit, 24, spent several months in pre-trial detention before being convicted under Thailand's strict royal defamation law, among almost 300 people charged under so-called lese majeste since 2020. She is currently on bail while she appeals against her conviction and has been helping organise commemorations for Tuesday's anniversary of the October 6, 1976, killings at Thammasat University. In one of the darkest chapters in modern Thai history, security forces and right-wing mobs massacred student protesters at one of the nation's top universities. "Back then, guns were fired and bodies lay on the ground," Nutthanit said as she walked AFP through the campus in Bangkok. "Today, the violence comes through the law." The Thai government did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the use of legal measures against activists.