I grew up hearing adults use Si Quey as a boogeyman whenever I misbehaved.
"If you're bad, Si Quey will come eat your liver!" they said.
His body was cremated by the Corrections Department last Thursday at Wat Bang Phraek Tai, which is adjacent to Bang Kwang prison where he was executed by shooting back in 1959. The temple connects to the prison by a red door through which the bodies of executed prisoners were carried out.
After the execution, a doctor at Siriraj Hospital placed a request for his body so that Si Quey's brain could be studied. Afterwards, his embalmed body was kept at Siriraj Medical Museum inside a glass box with a label that stated "Si Quey Sae-ung (a cannibal)" as a deterrent. Over the years, Buddhist rituals were performed to afford him some merit in the afterlife as he was considered an ajarn yai (a Thai term for cadaver) to medical students.
Notoriously known as a serial killer of children and a cannibal, he was convicted for the murder of a boy, however, he had been accused of murdering six children, four of which were found with internal organs missing. Only one victim survived. During the investigation, his life story was told through an interpreter as he had come to Thailand as an immigrant labourer who didn't speak or read Thai.
Back then, Thai media reported that he got his first taste of human flesh during the second Sino-Japanese War where he ate internal organs of his dead comrades to survive. When he was a boy, a monk suggested eating raw liver and heart to gain strength to fight back against his bullies.
Eventually, he was caught trying to burn the body of a boy by his father in Rayong for which he was arrested. This arrest led to accusations of him murdering children in four provinces from 1954 to 1958. His story has been adapted into one lakorn and one film, which recount his notoriety.
On the flip side, many have also come to view him as a possible scapegoat. There are doubts surrounding his conviction and understandably so given the less-than-perfect track record of the Thai justice system and the lack of forensic investigation at that time.
His confessions didn't correspond with the facts surrounding those cases. He also changed his confession once. Moreover, his conviction was the result of his confessions and not because he was found guilty due to scientific evidence. A girl, who was supposedly his first victim, survived an attempt to have her throat slit and said Si Quey wasn't her attacker.
Did the authorities back then take the easy route and pin all the crimes on him to close the cases? Was he made a scapegoat to protect the real killer(s)? Was Si Quey fooled to confess to the crimes with a false promise of being sent back home? Was he, as a migrant labourer, afforded due process? There are many observations to back the scapegoat theory.
We may never know the truth and I'm not trying to convince you one way or another.
What we do know for sure, given today's sensitivity, is that we should afford at least a modicum amount of dignity to any human being regardless of what we think of them. Si Quey was shot to death but you can argue that his punishment continued for six decades while being kept in that glass box. Regarding his crimes, we still don't know today without a doubt whether he was involved or not. He was turned into a scary character and an item of curiosity to satiate our appetite for the macabre. What was the point of keeping his body in a glass box on display anyway?
If anything positive can be drawn from the call to have his body removed from the museum and cremated is that it shows Thai society has become more aware of human rights and the concept of restoring humanity to fellow humans in life or death. By affording dignity to Si Quey, it is by no means disrespecting those children.
Will the story of Si Quey eventually be laid to rest?
The temple where his cremation took place has decided to keep his ashes in the temple's museum for fear they may be stolen if kept elsewhere. The temple has 40 CCTV cameras to prevent anyone from stealing his ashes. It may be too early to say that Si Quey will actually get to rest in peace.
Pornchai Sereemongkonpol is the Guru editor of the Bangkok Post.