THAI SOLDIERS carrying assault rifles continued to block access to Bangkok’s business district yesterday, as protesters on the other side of the busy intersection retrenched their own positions in case of fresh conflict.
The Red Shirts have staged a six-week campaign to get prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to step down and call elections, but the ruler has vowed to remain in office until elections in December.
One of the Red Shirt leaders Nattawut Saikua told his supporters to stand down from a planned rally on the Silom Road, home of many financial institutions, but said the protesters were there “indefinitely” and the group was vocal last night as speeches were read out.
There were also signs that the numbers of Red Shirts were thinning to several thousand from tens of thousands earlier, as people return to their farms and jobs.
“We will not be going to Silom today because the government has already deployed troops,” he said. “When those troops are withdrawn, we will march to Silom.”
Across the bustling intersection, young women offered the troops flowers and took photographs with the soldiers, some of whom are camped out behind razor wire on an overpass with a direct line of fire towards the protesters.
Despite the flowers, the military line has become much tougher.
“We can no longer use the soft to hard steps,” said army spokesman Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd. “We have to keep a distance between troops and demonstrators.
“If they try to break the line, we will start using tear gas and if they do break the line, we need to use weapons to deal with them decisively.”
Prompting caution on both sides are fears of a repeat of the April 10th bloodshed, when the worst political violence Thailand has seen in 18 years left 25 people dead and more than 800 wounded after security forces tried to move protesters out of one of the areas they were occupying.
The Red Shirt camp also has a military aspect to it, with protesters in black combat gear and face-masks controlling traffic and stockpiling sharpened bamboo spears and paving stones as missiles for any possible confrontation.
Flares fired by protesters sent puffs of smoke in the air during the day yesterday, sounding for all the world like gunfire and causing the riot police in the grounds of the luxury Dusit Thani hotel to twitch in their body armour.
That the protesters, many of them supporters of the exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have managed to occupy such a huge swathe of the upscale hotel and shopping district in downtown Bangkok is a testament to their commitment.
It also shows that this stand-off cannot go on forever. The unrest is costing billions of baht and further tarnishes Thailand’s all-important image as one of the world’s great tourist destinations.
The latest casualties were the Holiday Inn and the InterContinental hotels, which were forced to close. Each is surrounded by tents and stalls selling street food and had only a handful of guests anyway. Both have said they will reopen next Monday, which many read as a sign that perhaps action could be taken over the weekend.
However Mr Abhisit, who spoke on state TV on Monday night, said he was not going to set a date for ejecting the protesters.