Three Thai pro-democracy leaders were in hospital yesterday after chaotic scenes outside a Bangkok police station overnight as officers tried to slap them with further criminal charges.
A court on Friday ordered the release of Panupong “Mike” Jadnok, Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul and Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, who have been in custody since the middle of last month on sedition charges.
However, police sought to question them over outstanding arrest warrants.
Photo: Reuters
For months, protesters have staged almost daily rallies demanding reforms to the country’s monarchy and for Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha — a former military chief who staged a 2014 coup — to resign.
The student-led demonstrations are also calling for a rewrite of the military-scripted constitution and an end to alleged government harassment of political opponents.
Panupong seemed to be unconscious as he was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station on Friday night after being transported in a police van from jail.
Local media said that he fainted after being subjected to a “chokehold” by plainclothes police.
Parit and Panusaya were allowed to mingle with about 300 supporters outside the station for several hours until police from Ayutthaya, 80km north of Bangkok arrived to question them early yesterday morning.
Tosaporn Sererak, a doctor and former lawmaker, was with the pair as they were loaded into an ambulance around 4:30am.
“After questioning, both Rung and Penguin were feeling weak and have been sent to hospital where they are expected to stay for two-three days,” Tosaporn said, adding that Parit has shards of broken glass in his skin from a scuffle in a police van.
Meanwhile, some students posed with cardboard cutouts of well-known critics of the monarchy as Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn was to present degrees at Thammasat University in Bangkok yesterday.
Student protesters set up life-size cardboard cutouts of historian Somsak Jeamteerasakul and former diplomat Pavin Chachavalpongpun, widely followed critics of the monarchy who live in self-exile.
“I chose to take a picture with Somsak because I respect him and I don’t think he deserves whatever happened to him for speaking the truth and bravely criticising the monarchy openly,” said one 23-year-old student, who gave his name as Marut.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS