Political Crisis In Thailand

[des_yeo03]

Troops crack down on Bangkok protests

BANGKOK (AFP) - - Thai troops fired warning shots and tear gas in clashes with petrol bomb-hurling protesters in Bangkok, leaving 70 injured as the government launched a crackdown to enforce a state of emergency.

Demonstrators charged military lines with hijacked buses in a battle at a key junction, where soldiers unleashed long volleys of automatic weapon fire into the air as they advanced on the red-shirted activists.

The government said it would take measures to secure major ports and airports, a day after embattled Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced the emergency decree to curb protests against his four-month-old rule.

In a televised address on Monday, Abhisit accused the supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra of stockpiling weapons and warned peaceful demonstrators to disperse before the government took further action.

"Those who want to help the government restore normality can return home," he said. "The government has carefully mapped out a plan to implement the law."

Abhisit said that 70 people were wounded, 23 of them soldiers, but rejected claims on a protesters' radio station that four had been killed.

Thailand� has endured years of political turmoil but this is the biggest crisis that Abhisit has faced since he came to power in December, following a controversial court ruling that drove Thaksin's allies out of office.

Troops first moved before dawn to secure Bangkok's busy Din Daeng intersection, with soldiers firing hundreds of rounds into the air after protesters pelted them with rocks and molotov cocktails, AFP reporters said.

The government announced it had secured the area but demonstrators played cat-and-mouse with soldiers throughout the morning, before a second round of clashes erupted at lunchtime at the nearby Victory Monument landmark.

Protesters set fire to hijacked buses, but as soldiers advanced with water cannons, the demonstrators drove another three buses at the lines of military, prompting them to open fire for several minutes, AFP reporters said.

The chaos erupted just streets away from shopping malls where tourists who had come to Bangkok for the Thai New Year festival were faced with closed signs.

"You can't see where the situation is going. It's pretty scary and I have two little ones with me," said 43-year-old tourist Sharon Pangilinan, from the Philippines.

Thailand has endured years of political turmoil but this is the biggest crisis that Abhisit has faced since he came to power in December, following a controversial court ruling that drove Thaksin's allies out of office.

Soldiers were deployed at train stations and at strategic locations including the electricity authority.

But authorities made no effort to clear the main body of some 10,000 so far peaceful protesters who defied the state of emergency and remained camped out at Government House, where Abhisit's offices in the capital are located.

"Abhisit, are you still a human being? This is a most inhuman act, to crack down on unarmed protesters," protest leader Jatuporn Prompan told the crowd there.

It is the first time the army has taken action since Abhisit ordered tanks and soldiers onto the streets of Bangkok on Sunday. The military refused to enforce emergency decrees by previous pro-Thaksin governments last year.

He is under intense pressure to curb the unrest after the "Red Shirt" protesters stormed the venue of an Asian summit Saturday, forcing it to be cancelled and leaders to be evacuated -- some by helicopter.

The trouble moved to Bangkok Sunday, where demonstrators attacked a convoy carrying Abhisit out of the interior ministry, and fired shots in the air after police arrested the leader of the summit raid.

Demonstrations also reportedly spread to northern Thailand, Thaksin's stronghold, where he is popular among the rural poor. He remains loathed by the Bangkok-based power centres of the palace, military and bureaucracy.

Thaksin, who lives in exile to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption, stoked up his followers by phone late Sunday, saying: "You don't have to be frightened of this state of emergency."

Source (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090413/tap-thailand-politics-protest-c8d5519.html)

[des_yeo03]

Troops surround protests near Thai PM's office

By John Ruwitch and Martin Petty

BANGKOK - Thai troops encircled thousands of protesters encamped near the prime minister's office in Bangkok early on Tuesday after a day of street clashes in which two people were killed and dozens injured.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who declared a state of emergency in Bangkok on Sunday, urged the protesters to leave. He told Reuters his aim was to restore law and order but said their rights would be respected.

In an interview with Reuters, Abhisit ruled out an immediate dissolution of parliament and said he was not interested in making a deal with exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the figurehead of the protest movement.

Speaking of the "Red Shirt" protesters, he said: "If they are not inciting violence, if they are not engaged in riots, if they don't have weapons, then they can exercise their rights."

With Humvees and armoured personnel carriers, the army and police set up a perimeter around an estimated 6,000 demonstrators, including women, children and a few Buddhist monks, who were calling for the resignation of Abhisit.

But some of demonstrators prepared for a confrontation, felling trees and laying them across a main road between the troops and the centre of the protest, stockpiling rocks and bricks and dousing disabled buses in the street with petrol.

The protest stems from an intractable dispute pitting royalists, the military and the urban middle-class against a poorer rural majority loyal to the exiled former prime minister.

Abhisit said in the interview that dissolving parliament could lead to electoral violence. But he said he was willing to listen to the grievances of some of the protesters.

On Monday black smoke billowed over the city of 12 million people after protesters set fire to several buses to block the troops. The side of one government building was ablaze.

Soldiers drove them back with repeated charges and fusillades of assault rifle fire, aimed at the sky and the crowd.

One person was shot dead in fighting between protesters and residents angry about the demonstrations, Satit Wongnongtaey, a minister at the prime minister's office, said on television.

A hospital said another person was also fatally shot in the violence under similar circumstance, and there was sporadic fighting between protesters and locals in the evening.

The Emergency Medical Institute said on Monday night 94 people, including soldiers, were injured in the clashes.

Thaksin, ousted in 2006 coup and living in exile, told CNN from an undisclosed location: "Many people are dying... They even take the bodies on the military trucks and take them away."

PEACEFUL MEANS

The demonstrations have further hobbled a country reeling from political chaos last year and the global financial crisis.

Rating agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's, both of which already have a negative outlook on Thailand's sovereign ratings, said the renewed political unrest increased the risk of a downgrade.

"Tourism can rebound, but investor confidence will be very hard to get back," said S&P analyst Kim Eng Tan. "Going forward we expect investors will become a lot more risk averse."

Thailand's top military commander, General Songkitti Chakabakr, said in a televised statement on Monday that the committee charged with restoring order would strive "through every peaceful means" to bring the situation back to normal as soon as possible.

On Saturday protesters forced the cancellation of a high-profile Asian summit in Thailand, a big embarrassment for Abhisit, who took office only in December.

"I believe the darkest days in Thailand's history are yet to come as we see no swift solution to ongoing divisiveness," said Prinn Panitchpakdi, a CLSA Asia-Pacific analyst.

Several countries issued cautionary advisories on travel to Thailand.

The violence on Monday began before dawn, at the start of the Thai New Year holiday, much of it near one of the city's central traffic hubs, Din Daeng junction, which protesters had blockaded.

Last year politicians backed by the "Red Shirts" were in power and royalist "Yellow Shirts," supporters of those now in government, held nearly non-stop protests, culminating in a week-long occupation of Bangkok's main airport.

The political strife died down for a while after Abhisit came to office through parliamentary defections that Thaksin supporters say the army engineered. They demand a new election.

Protests flared anew after Thaksin, living in exile to avoid jail on a corruption conviction, said Abhisit must resign by April 8 -- the day before Thailand was to host the now abandoned East Asia Summit in the beach resort of Pattaya.

Thailand has had 18 coups since 1932 and the military often has the final say in Thai politics, sometimes with the blessing of the king.

(Additional reporting by Vithoon Amorn, Kittipong Soonprasert, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Andrew Marshall; Editing by Jonathan Wright

Source (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20090414/tap-oukwd-uk-thailand-politics-173a892.html)