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.

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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