About 2,000 anti-government protesters marched past Bangkok’s upmarket shopping malls yesterday, accusing police of brutality, upping pressure on the increasingly isolated prime minister.
In a repeat of a similar rally on Friday, supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) handed out leaflets and CDs showing graphic images of protesters injured in a deadly clash with police earlier this month.
“The police try to distort the truth. I insist that what we bring is the whole truth,” Somsak Kosaisuk, one of the PAD leaders, told crowds of people dressed in yellow shirts, which shows loyalty to the Thai king.
Two people were killed and nearly 500 injured on Oct. 7 when police fired tear gas to prevent thousands of PAD supporters from blocking parliament, prompting some protesters to fight back.
A police officer at the scene early yesterday estimated that about 1,300 protesters had turned out and crowds later swelled, blocking traffic on normally busy roads.
About 300 police officers stood on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, the prime ministers of Cambodia and Thailand plan to hold talks this week in Beijing after a long-running border dispute escalated into a deadly shoot-out, a Cambodian official said.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen expects to meet Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat on the sidelines of a meeting between leaders of Asian and European nations on Friday and Saturday.
“The prime minister will bilaterally meet with the Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao [溫家寶] and we have planned to meet with the Thai prime minister as well,” Hun Sen’s adviser Sri Thamrong said.
Somchai later told reporters in Bangkok that no specific meeting had been arranged with Hun Sen.
“The Cambodia issue needs to be discussed between the two countries,” he said. “[Talks] depend on whether there is an appropriate atmosphere and an appropriate time available or not.”
Thai and Cambodian military officials are scheduled to hold talks later this week.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS