THE BATTLE of Bangkok raged for a fifth day yesterday, as red-shirted anti-government protesters ignored a government ultimatum to quit their downtown encampment. Troops closed in on their barricades, made up of tyres, razor wire, concrete and bamboo sticks, to surround the raggle-taggle mob.
Over the past five days 37 people have died, most of them protesters. Yesterday the air rang with volleys of machine gun fire and firecrackers, although the conflict was less intense than in previous days.
There was a sense of events coming to a head in Thailand’s worst political crisis since 1992. Troops were encroaching ever closer on the occupied zone, where the Red Shirts are calling for the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to step down and call immediate elections.
A light plane flew over the protest zone, dropping leaflets demanding that the 5,000 protesters still occupying the fortified settlement in Bangkok’s commercial district leave by 3pm or face criminal charges and prison.
The city was quiet but this was a metropolis drawing breath, rather than any easing of Thailand’s deadliest conflict for years. Schools have been closed and yesterday and today declared public holidays, although financial markets and banks remained open.
Earlier in the day, the Red Shirts held a minute’s silence to mark the death from his injuries of Maj Gen Khattiya Sawasdiphol, the renegade army leader who was the protest movement’s main military strategist. His shooting by a sniper last week kicked off the current round of unrest.
The Red Shirts have also taken the protest to other parts of the downtown area, setting up mobile stages on the back of lorries to press their case, outwitting the army cordons. In attempts to confuse sharpshooters positioned around the protest zones, protesters have been setting fire to mounds of tyres. Dirty plumes of smoke could be seen rising from some of Bangkok’s most elegant shopping boulevards.
In one daring move the protesters hijacked a petrol tanker and pushed it into the middle of the Rama IV thoroughfare, a key road in the conflict. They tried to set it on fire, but were stopped by soldiers firing live ammunition.
Many of the Red Shirts come from the north of the country, the core support area for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, although the situation is about much more than him right now. Red Shirt leaders have made a fresh offer to negotiate, but the government has said that “terrorist” elements within the opposition make this impossible. “Terrorists are trying to cause deaths in the area,” said government text messages and leaflets.
Many of the text messages didn’t reach those they were intended for, as mobile phone signals were jammed in the area. The Dusit Thani hotel, one of the city’s top hostelries, which faces the Silom barricades, came under fire from RPGs overnight, and was finally closed yesterday.
Many but not all of the women and children among the protesters have moved to a Buddhist temple compound within the zone.
One possible reason that no solution has been found is that the protest movement represents many different interest groups who believe Mr Abhisit’s coalition government came to power through manipulation of the constitution and parliament, with the approval of the military, and they say democracy would be best served by fresh elections.
However, Mr Abhisit’s offer to stage a new poll in November was rejected, prompting further chaos.
As so often in Thailand, those on both sides are looking to the royal palace for intervention from King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is hugely popular across the political spectrum. But the 82-year-old monarch has been in hospital since September, and has not intervened in any meaningful way.
Since the conflict began, 66 people have been killed and 1,600 have been wounded, 25 of them on one bloody night on April 10th when troops opened fire on protesters with live ammunition.
