About 30,000 protesters launched a “people’s coup” on Thailand’s government yesterday, swarming state agencies in violent clashes, taking control of a state broadcaster and forcing the prime minister to flee a police compound.
However, after a day of skirmishes between protesters hurling stones and gasoline bombs against riot police firing back with teargas, the demonstrators failed to breach heavily barricaded Government House, the office of Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, although the number of protesters began to swell as night fell.
“They haven’t seized a single place,” Thai National Security Council head Paradorn Pattanathabutr said.
Photo: Reuters
Meanwhile, the government told people in Bangkok to stay indoors from 10pm last night until 5am today after a day of violence.
“After 10pm until 5am, if it is not neccessary, we ask people to not leave their homes for their safety so they will not become victims of provocateurs,” Thai Deputy Prime Minister Pracha Promnok said in a televised address.
The protesters sowed chaos in one of Southeast Asia’s biggest cities, breaching a police line, seizing seven police trucks and forcing Yingluck to move to an undisclosed location from a building where she was to give media interviews.
Small fires burned from gasoline bombs that landed by police trucks. Protesters pulled at barbed wire fences as others washed teargas from their eyes with bottled water.
It is the latest dramatic turn in a conflict pitting Bangkok’s urban middle class and royalist elite against the mostly rural poor supporters of Yingluck and her billionaire brother, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup.
The deep detonation of stun grenades, followed by the jeers of protesters, echoed across the historic government quarter, not far from Bangkok’s Khao San Road backpacker area, after a chaotic night of gun and knife battles in east Bangkok in which four people were killed and at least 57 wounded.
Hospitals reported 47 people injured yesterday.
Police spokesman Piya Utayo said troops would forcibly dislodge protesters who have occupied a government complex since Thursday and the Ministry of Finance since Monday.
“We have sent forces to these places to take back government property,” he said on national TV.
Journalists waiting to interview Yingluck inside the police Narcotics Suppression Bureau were told by Natthriya Thaweevong, an aide to the prime minister, that she had left after protesters made it inside the outer part of the compound, the Police Sports Club, where the bureau is located.
Protesters massed in front of a police barricade outside Wat Benjamabhopit, also known as the Marble Temple. Police fired teargas as some tried to heave aside rows of concrete barriers.
“I just want the people named Shinawatra to get on a plane and go somewhere — and please, don’t come back,” said Chatuporn Tirawongkusol, 33, whose family runs a Bangkok restaurant.
Outside the Metropolitan Police Bureau, about 3,000 protesters rallied, accusing riot-clad police of being manipulated by Thaksin, a former policeman who rose to become a telecommunications magnate before entering politics and winning back-to-back elections in 2001 and 2005.
The area around Government House was a scene of nearly nonstop skirmishes, as police fired teargas into the stone-throwing crowd. A Reuters photographer saw protesters hurl at least a dozen gasoline bombs into police positions from a college campus across a canal from Government House.
Protest leader, former Thai deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban, urged government workers to go on strike today and called on all TV stations to stop broadcasting state news.
“We invite all Thais to join us and defend democracy,” he said in a speech televised live on all almost every station, including state-owned Thai PBS, which agreed to broadcast the speech after protesters swarmed into its compound.
Capping a week-long bid to topple Yingluck and end her family’s more than decade-long influence over Thai politics, Suthep had urged supporters to seize government offices, TV stations, police headquarters and the prime minister’s offices in a “people’s coup.”
Suthep told supporters they had occupied 12 state agencies and brought a million people into the streets.
However, police said about 30,000 people joined the protest.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2