ALTHOUGH THERE are signs that the Red Shirt effort is flagging, those anti-government protesters gathered in the Pathumwanaram Temple at the edge of the occupied zone in Bangkok remained defiant yesterday, as talks continued about ending the nine-week crisis that has seen 67 people killed and threatened to rip Thailand apart.
The temple is where the women and children who have been evacuated from the main protest site have gathered, under a deal with the government that stipulates it will not be attacked if there is another crackdown.
The Red Shirts, showing keen logistical expertise and diligence, have run a city within a city in the hotel and retail heart of Bangkok for more than two months to press their calls for an immediate election, demands that now look very unlikely to be met.
There is a sense that the Red Shirt opposition is fading out, and the protesters, many of whom support exiled prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have slipped away since peace efforts collapsed and the full weight of Thailand’s state apparatus was brought to bear on them. They are fearful of another bloody crackdown, and their spirit has been compromised, if not broken.
There are still barricades in place, and black-T-shirted young men with sharpened bamboo poles and paving stones ready to fight. Each weekend brings fresh protesters to the city, heightening tensions again. Public holidays have been declared until Friday, although that may also change.
But logistics are working against the Red Shirts. The bags of rubbish are growing as the city stops servicing occupied zones.
This long-running row is based on the Red Shirts’ beliefs that prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is only in power because the army rigged the parliament, and that the rural and urban poor are being closed out of political life.
They are now seeking United Nations help to mediate the crisis, but the government is not interested. Bangkok said talks mediated by the Thai senate would only go ahead if the Red Shirts left their encampment.
The military used heavy firepower in the last few days and they continue to secure a perimeter to stop supplies getting in. However, troops armed with M-16s casually waved most people through the checkpoints yesterday, in contrast to the fraught approaches to the same barriers just a day earlier.
Yesterday, there were only hundreds of Red Shirts, most of them women, gathered at the stage in Rajprasong to watch speeches being made and protest songs being sung. It’s a far cry from the tens of thousands who crowded this precinct just weeks ago.
“We are Thai people. We are not terrorists,” pleaded one speaker, echoing a line the Red Shirts have adopted all the way through this crisis.
The whole occupied area feels like a post-nuclear environment. The Silom Road barricade, which until a couple of days ago looked like something out of a medieval war movie, is almost totally deserted. The air reeks of kerosene, and protesters remain at hand to set the tyres and bamboo poles alight if the troops encroach further, but this is no longer a bridgehead to be feared.
The death of “Seh Daeng” (Commander Red), the Red Shirts’ security chief, who was killed by a sniper last week, has done a lot of harm to the protesters’ military strategy.
There were reports in local media that a Thai reporter working for France 24 TV was attacked during an interview at the Pathumwanaram Temple, because she was accused of misrepresenting the news about the Red Shirts’ plight.
However, it will take more sophisticated media management than that to spin the occupation into a success now.