Communism Destroys Religion: poster 171e for Thai readers, 1954

A Thai-language poster distributed in Bangkok, catalog date 15 September 1954, in a U.S. Information Agency "Religious Oppression" set. It pairs a still from a Soviet film with photographs of a wrecked train and says Communist soldiers at Battambang killed 30 monks (NAID 6949076).

What the sheet prints

A yellow sheet with a headline, a block of text, and two kinds of picture. One is a frame from a film showing Buddhist figures and a statue holding a telephone. The other is three photographs of a damaged rail bridge and a wrecked train. The text joins them into one charge.

ลัทธิคอมมูนิสม์ทำลายศาสนา

[Translation] Communism destroys religion. These pictures show the hatred and contempt for religion of Communism more clearly than any explanation. The top picture is a scene from a film made in the Soviet Union called "The Buddha Speaks on the Phone". At right is a picture of the horrifying incident at Battambang, where Communist soldiers killed as many as 30 monks who were travelling home to visit relatives. They derailed the train, strafed those monks with machine guns, then poured petrol on them and set them alight until they perished.

Who issued it

No issuer is printed in the transcription. The National Archives files the poster in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. It is the fifth of a lettered set, 171a to 171g, that the archive groups under religious oppression, with sheets on masked priests, a Buddha statue, Cardinal Mindszenty and caricatures of the Buddha and Christ.

How to read it

The poster claims a specific atrocity: a derailment, machine-gun fire and burning, with a number of victims. The FRAME record does not corroborate the Battambang account, and neither can this page. The photographs show a wrecked train. The sentence tells the reader who did it and why.

FRAME tags the method card stacking and fear appeal. A film still about the Buddha on a telephone is offered as proof of "hatred and contempt," and one reported incident stands for the whole of a political movement. Freedom of religion is a cause worth defending in any language, and governments that persecuted believers deserved to be named for it. The defense is stronger when every claim can be checked. A poster that tells readers the pictures need no explanation is asking them not to ask.