Thai Cops Quell Anti-Government Dissent
About 17,000 police officers were deployed to subdue at least 9,000 people who rallied in the streets of Bangkok on Saturday to call for the overthrow of the Thai government. Protesters believe the current prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is doing the bidding of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from the post in 2006.
About 17,000 police officers were deployed to subdue at least 9,000 people who rallied in the streets of Bangkok on Saturday to call for the overthrow of the Thai government. Protesters believe the current prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is doing the bidding of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from the post in 2006.
Demonstrators, organized by the royalist Pitak Siam group and led by retired Gen. Boonlert Kaewprasit, attempted to scale concrete and barbed wire barriers to enter the protest site, Bangkok’s Royal Plaza, not far from the parliament.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
AS CHAOS UNFOLDS, FIND SOLID GROUND…The Guardian:
The group is supported by the ‘yellow shirts’ of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, who have been involved in destabilising or ousting governments led or backed by Thaksin in 2006 and 2008.
Boonlert told supporters: “The world will see this corrupted and cruel government. The world can see the government under a puppet.”
A police spokesman said five officers had been injured in the skirmishes, two of them seriously, and that 130 demonstrators had been detained, some of them carrying knives and bullets.
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Hours after supporters of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra promised to take on protesters shutting down parts of Bangkok, a bomb detonated near a demonstration site in a busy shopping district Sunday, killing two people and wounding at least 22.
An estimated 100,000 protesters shut down Bangkok's commercial district Monday.
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The situation in Bangkok between "red shirt" protesters and the Thai government was tense and precarious on Monday, as leaders from both sides of the conflict made tentative attempts to communicate while thousands of demonstrators held their ground in their encampment.
Violence escalated Friday between Thai police and the throng of thousands of protesters still entrenched in Bangkok, touched off in part by the shooting of rogue general Khattiya Sawasdipol, aka Commander Red, on Thursday.
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