Thai Protests Turn Violent as TV Station Is Stormed/Thai Forces Advance on Protesters

Thai Protests Turn Violent as TV Station Is Stormed
By SETH MYDANS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/world/asia/10thai.html?hp


BANGKOK — In the first violent clash of a nearly monthlong standoff in Bangkok, antigovernment demonstrators stormed a satellite television station on Friday, climbed over rolls of barbed wire and beat back soldiers and riot police officers who confronted them with tear gas and water cannons.

Soon afterward, officials announced that the station, the People’s Television Station, would resume broadcasting, a significant victory for the protesters in challenging the writ of the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The scenes at the station seemed to suggest the prevailing winds of the moment, as soldiers with their helmets and riot shields departed single file between rows of cheering protesters, exchanging smiles and slaps on the back. One soldier, with a red ribbon tied around his wrist, raised a fist.

Several casualties were reported on both sides, but witnesses said the security forces did not appear to have made a determined stand in the face of a vigorous charge by mostly unarmed protesters.

One witness said some soldiers had fled their own tear gas as it blew back into their faces.

The protesters, who are mostly supporters of the fugitive former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, are demanding that the government step aside and call a new election. Mr. Abhisit took office in a parliamentary vote in December 2008, when a previous pro-Thaksin government was dissolved by a court for electoral fraud.

Analysts say the military was involved behind the scenes in installing Mr. Abhisit’s government. As the challenge by the protesters, known as the Red Shirts, has escalated, the allegiance of the military has become a subject of discussion among political analysts. The protesters mostly represent the country’s poorer classes in a long-running challenge to the country’s traditional ruling elite, which includes high-ranking military members.

Until Friday, both the government and the protesters had been at pains to avoid violence, which both feared could escalate into chaos and could discredit their causes.

Under the emergency decree, the government had shut down the Red Shirts’ television channel as well as Internet sites sympathetic to the protesters and to Mr. Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is now abroad, evading a jail term on a corruption conviction.

Arrest warrants have been issued, but apparently not enforced, for several protest leaders. The government has so far taken no other action to enforce the decree, which allows the military to disperse crowds in the streets and to arrest their leaders.

Mr. Abhisit has been the subject of increasing criticism, and even derision, for failing to take stronger steps to clear away the protesters, who have paralyzed the commercial heart of Bangkok, forcing the closing since Saturday of several malls, hotels and banks.

On Wednesday, a group of protesters humiliated the government by storming the Parliament building and forcing cabinet ministers to flee over a back wall for evacuation by helicopter.

Hours later, Mr. Abhisit announced the emergency decree and set up a joint civilian-military crisis center empowered to impose curfews, ban public gatherings and censor the news media.

On Thursday night, Mr. Abhisit addressed the nation on television, repeating a pledge not to use strong-arm measures to quell the demonstrations and explaining his decision to bar antigovernment information.

“What the government wants is peace and happiness,” he said. “It is the manipulation of information that is creating hate.”

Most television stations are owned by the government. But a number of national and local television and radio stations are in private hands, and many outlets, particularly in the rural heartland, are virulently antigovernment.

Protesters who have gathered among the glass-fronted high rises in the commercial district live in a constant din of speeches and broadcasts that pound home the views of their leaders.

“I am here to ask for democracy,” said one protester, Tassanee Rattanapunsak, 46, who sells car parts and wore a headband announcing her love for Mr. Thaksin. “If I stay at home, I don’t know anything. The government closes my eyes.”

Mr. Thaksin, who has become a tech-savvy fugitive, has been communicating with his supporters through video links and radio broadcasts. Most recently, his medium of choice has been Twitter.

“The worst thing is to have a dictatorial government that blocks the media and forces media organizations that are not neutral to be used as political tools,” he said in a tweet on Friday afternoon.

On a more personal note, the former prime minister, who has based himself mostly in Dubai after being told he was unwelcome in Britain and elsewhere, tweeted: “Tomorrow I will travel to Saudi Arabia at the prince’s invitation. The prince has invited me to join him in constructing a new city near Mecca.”




Thai Forces Advance on Protesters
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/10/world/AP-AS-Thailand-Politics.html?_r=1&hp


BANGKOK (AP) -- Thai security forces launched a large-scale crackdown Saturday on anti-government demonstrators who have been staging disruptive protests in the Thai capital for the past month, vowing to clear one of their main encampments by nightfall. Scores of people have been hurt in street clashes.

Chaotic confrontations broke out in several locations, mostly involving pushing and shoving by the two sides, though some protesters wielded sticks and threw rocks, while security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Reporters said live rounds were also fired, and a reporter for Thai TV station TPBS showed a spent bullet and bullet holes in the side of a car.

The so-called Red Shirt protesters are demanding that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve Parliament and call new elections. They claim that he came to power illegitimately in December 2008 with the help of military pressure on Parliament.

Government forces have confronted the protesters before but pulled back rather than risk bloodshed.

On Friday, the army failed to prevent demonstrators from breaking into the compound of a satellite transmission station. The humiliating rout of troops and riot police raised questions about how much control Abhisit has over the police and army.

Army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd told the Nation Channel cable TV station on Saturday that security forces will try to reclaim the rally site near Pan Fah bridge in the old part of Bangkok ''before dusk.'' The area was occupied by Red Shirt protesters about a month ago. The government has issued an emergency decree and other orders making the demonstrations illegal.

He said that they would send more forces to a second rally site in the heart of Bangkok's tourist and shopping ''to pressure the protesters.'' The city's elevated mass transit system known as the Skytrain, which runs past that site, stopped operations and closed all its stations as possible confrontation loomed.

The government's Erawan emergency center reported 93 people injured -- mostly from tear gas or with bruises -- including 19 soldiers and 3 police officers.

''Security forces will use proper measures to take over the public areas occupied by the protesters,'' government spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn told cable TV network TNN on Saturday afternoon.

The violence has not yet approached the level of last April, when Red Shirts began rampaging on city streets and torching public buses.

On Saturday, a helicopter circled over one protest site, where protesters were trying to disable public surveillance cameras by covering them with bags or cutting their cables. At a rally site in the heart of Bangkok's shopping district, protest leaders handed out damp towels and face masks to protect against tear gas, and called for more followers to gather.

The new deployment came after protesters were pushed back by water cannons and rubber bullets from the headquarters of the 1st Army Region. Although they have two main rally sites, the Red Shirts use trucks and motorcycles to send followers all over the city on short notice.

Arrest warrants have been issued for 27 Red Shirt leaders, but none is known to have been taken into custody.

Abhisit had vowed late Friday not to bend to their demands.

''It's not over yet. I'm confident if we stay true to righteousness, we will win the day,'' he said on nationwide television.

On Friday, protesters broke into the Thaicom transmission station and briefly restarted a pro-Red Shirt television station that had been shut down by the government under a state of emergency. After scattered hand to hand scuffles, the troops retreated in disarray, some taking positions inside the main Thaicom building. About a dozen people were hurt.

After talks were held between protest leaders and the authorities, agreement was reached to allow People Channel to resume broadcasting, and protesters and soldiers left the site. But several hours later, more than 4,000 army troops retook the transmission complex and cut off the People Channel's signal again.

Merchants say the boisterous demonstrations have cost them tens of millions of baht (millions of dollars), and luxury hotels near the site have been under virtual siege.

The escalating demonstrations are part of a long-running battle between the mostly poor and rural supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the ruling elite they say orchestrated the 2006 military coup that removed him from power.

They see the Oxford-educated Abhisit as a symbol of the elite and claim he took office illegitimately in December 2008 with the help of military pressure on Parliament.

''The government could be seen as humiliating itself if it fails to enforce the law,'' said Associate Professor Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

To effectively enforce the state of emergency, the government needs the cooperation of the military, she said, but it could be that the army is reluctant to use force against the protesters.

Thailand's military has traditionally played a major role in politics, staging almost a score of coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. In 2008, the army undercut the government's authority by refusing to move against demonstrators who were protesting against a pro-Thaksin government.


Associated Press writers Denis D. Gray, Thanyarat Doksone and Ian Mader contributed to this report.