Breaking men: a conscript's tale

His face looks tired and strained.

- Sanitsuda Ekachai

His voice trembles, carrying the pain and bitterness from the dehumanisation he endured as a conscript.In a video clip that went viral last week, he said he had earned about 16,000 baht a month before conscription. Two years later, he emerged poorer, bruised and wondering how “serving the nation” had come to resemble forced labour.

“Two weeks after basic training, I was sent to an officer's house to take care of his bedridden father,’ he recalled bitterly. “I had to prepare liquid food, feed him through a tube and clean up his excrement and urine”

He did this, along with other household chores, around the clock, barely getting any sleep. For meals, he was ordered to collect food from a nearby temple. “I told them I'm a Muslim. I can’t eat that food,” he said.

The reply still stings: Don’t make a big deal of it. You won't die eating it. Just don’t eat the pork. In the end, he paid out of his own meagre salary to buy halal food and cook for himself.

After several months, his patience broke. When he raised his voice in protest, he was beaten and transferred to another house. There, he was made to mow lawns and do other manual chores, barred even from entering the building.

When he resisted again, he was beaten again. In two years of conscription, he said, he fired a gun only three times during brief training. “The rest of the time’ he said wryly, “I fought grass, ants and household chores”

The clip drew more than four million views and a flood of comments recounting strikingly similar experiences of forced labour and hazing. They were the lucky ones. They survived the servitude, the physical abuse and the systematic stripping of dignity. Many did not.

Between 2009 and 2024, at least 21 conscripts were reported to have died from physical abuse or so-called “unnatural causes” during training, according to Human Rights Watch. Most perpetrators escaped legal punishment.