Update: Phayao and Nattapat Akkakad were released without charge. The police said they merely wanted to ask about their activity and merely recorded it in the daily police ledger.
Family members of a nurse killed while helping injured red shirts during the 2010 political violence in Bangkok were arrested on Wednesday morning after they held a symbolic activity in response to the junta leader’s distortion of the facts about the 2010 killings in saying that the military did not kill anyone during the crackdown.
Phayao Akkahad and Nattapat Akkahad, mother and brother of Kamolked Akhad, the nurse killed at Pathum Wanaram Temple, were arrested by the police on Wednesday at 10.30 am and were detained at Pathumwan Police Station.
Earlier on Wednesday, the two distributed and read out the court’s ruling on the deaths of red-shirt protesters which concluded that they died from gunshots from the military. They then washed a soldier’s shirt as a symbolic gesture that the military’s uniforms were tainted with blood, let off firecrackers and said “People died here.”
Earlier in August, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha told reporters that “the military is not the defendant” in the case and that no military personnel reported killing anyone.
Last week, Gen Prayut said during his meeting with mainstream media editors that the photo evidence used in court of a military sniper aiming a gun in the direction of the temple was actually intentionally posed for photographs. He added that “I know very well who was behind this, which group is behind it and who paid the media to attack me.”
In the four years since the April-May 2010 crack-down, the Criminal Court has ruled on 30 deaths in a total of 20 cases concerning those killed in the massacre. According to the rulings, 18 out of the 30 people were killed by bullets coming from the military. These include Fabio Polenghi, an Italian photo-journalist, Kunakorn Srisuwan, a 13-year-old child, Pan Kamkong, a red-shirt taxi driver, and many others. However, none of the inquests specified the individual army officers responsible for the deaths.