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.
‘A SERIOUS THREAT’: Japan has expressed grave concern over the Strait’s security over the years, which demonstrated Tokyo’s firm support for peace in the area, an official said China’s military drills around Taiwan are “incompatible” with peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeshi Iwaya said during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (王毅) on Thursday. “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is important for the international community, including Japan,” Iwaya told Wang during a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related Foreign Ministers’ Meetings in Kuala Lumpur. “China’s large-scale military drills around Taiwan are incompatible with this,” a statement released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday cited Iwaya as saying. The Foreign Ministers’ Meetings are a series of diplomatic
URBAN COMBAT: FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missiles from the US made a rare public appearance during early-morning drills simulating an invasion of the Taipei MRT The ongoing Han Kuang military exercises entered their sixth day yesterday, simulating repelling enemy landings in Penghu County, setting up fortifications in Tainan, laying mines in waters in Kaohsiung and conducting urban combat drills in Taipei. At 5am in Penghu — part of the exercise’s first combat zone — participating units responded to a simulated rapid enemy landing on beaches, combining infantry as well as armored personnel. First Combat Zone Commander Chen Chun-yuan (陳俊源) led the combined armed troops utilizing a variety of weapons systems. Wang Keng-sheng (王鏗勝), the commander in charge of the Penghu Defense Command’s mechanized battalion, said he would give
‘REALISTIC’ APPROACH: The ministry said all the exercises were scenario-based and unscripted to better prepare personnel for real threats and unexpected developments The army’s 21st Artillery Command conducted a short-range air defense drill in Taoyuan yesterday as part of the Han Kuang exercises, using the indigenous Sky Sword II (陸射劍二) missile system for the first time in the exercises. The armed forces have been conducting a series of live-fire and defense drills across multiple regions, simulating responses to a full-scale assault by Chinese forces, the Ministry of National Defense said. The Sky Sword II missile system was rapidly deployed and combat-ready within 15 minutes to defend Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in a simulated attack, the ministry said. A three-person crew completed setup and
The Philippines is working behind the scenes to enhance its defensive cooperation with Taiwan, the Washington Post said in a report published on Monday. “It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro Jr told the paper in an interview on Thursday last week. Although there has been no formal change to the Philippines’ diplomatic stance on recognizing Taiwan, Manila is increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, the report said. The number of Chinese vessels in the seas around the Philippines, as well as Chinese
RSS