Thailand’s pro-establishment “Yellow Shirts” yesterday called for the imposition of martial law to end mass anti-government protests by the rival “Red Shirts,” warning they may take action themselves.
The Reds were on alert for a crackdown by the security forces on their fortified camp in the heart of Bangkok, where tensions remained high after a grenade attack late on Sunday on the house of a former prime minister injured 11 people.
Twenty-six people have died and almost 1,000 have been injured in the capital this month in Thailand’s bloodiest civil violence in almost two decades, despite a state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding areas.
PHOTO: EPA
The Yellows, formally known as the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), have said they will take action to “protect the country” if authorities do not deal with the thousands of anti-government Red-Shirt protesters.
A one-week deadline set by the Yellows for an end to the crippling protests expired with no end in sight and the movement called on its supporters to begin their own peaceful demonstrations.
“The prime minister knows well that in this situation military measures are needed because it was hard to resolve it through politics,” said Suriyasai Katasila, spokesman for the Yellow Shirts’ New Politics Party.
“There should be an announcement of martial law,” he said. “If the situation does not improve, PAD will consider intensifying its measures.”
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has rejected an offer by the Reds, who mostly support former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, to disperse if elections are held in three months’ time — softening earlier demands for snap polls.
Appearing on national television on Sunday alongside his army chief, Abhisit vowed to retake the sprawling protest site that has paralyzed Bangkok’s main retail district, but gave no indication of when a crackdown might come.
Thailand is largely split between the mainly rural poor and urban working class Reds, and the Yellows who staged their own street protests that heralded a 2006 coup ousting their enemy Thaksin.
Yellow protesters in 2008 blockaded Bangkok’s two airports, before a controversial court verdict removed Thaksin’s allies and allowed a parliamentary vote that brought in the current government.
The Yellows had remained largely silent since the Reds began mass rallies last month demanding immediate elections, but there are now growing fears of clashes between the rival groups.
The anti-government movement remained as defiant after another night passed with no sign of a crackdown on their base, which has been fortified with barricades made from piles of truck tires and sharpened bamboo poles.
“If Abhisit fails to crack down on us, he will have to leave office,” said one of the Reds’ leaders, Nattawut Saikuar.
If he succeeds in breaking up the protests, the Reds will rally across the country and prepare for a return to the capital, he said.
Many of the anti-government protesters have begun shedding their trademark red clothing and wearing other colors to make themselves harder to identify.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of