Normalcy on the Horizon in Smoldering Bangkok

by Jocelyn Gecker

Soldiers collecting identification cards of protestors who were cleared from their camps in downtown Bangkok on Thursday. (AP Photo)

Normalcy on the Horizon in Smoldering Bangkok

Bangkok. The Thai government declared on Thursday it had mostly quelled 10 weeks of violent protests in the capital as buildings still smoldered, troops rooted out small pockets of resistance and residents attempted to return to normal life.

But a curfew was extended in Bangkok and 23 other provinces for three more days. Troops and die-hard antigovernment protesters exchanged sporadic fire in parts of the city after the military operation the day before cleared most of a protest encampment in the center of the capital, leaving 15 dead and 96 wounded.

A special police unit on Thursday led more than 1,000 people — many of them women and children — away from a Buddhist temple in the heart of the former Red Shirt protest zone. Six bodies were found on its grounds.

The police had the approval of the temple’s abbot, but many of the women feared they would be jailed or abused by police and cried or clung to each other as they were led out. Others remained defiant.

“We won. We won. The Red Shirts will rise again,” one woman shouted.

Three more Red Shirt leaders surrendered to authorities on Thursday. Five leaders gave themselves up the day before and were flown to a military camp south of Bangkok for interrogation.

“I’d like to ask all sides to calm down and talk with each other in a peaceful manner,” said Veera Musikapong after being taken into custody Thursday. “We cannot create democracy with anger.”

Army spokesman Col. Sansern Kawekamnerd said the situation in the capital was mostly under control.

But a branch of Siam City Bank was set afire, the first reported arson attack after 39 buildings were torched the day before. According to state-run television, a firefighter was shot and wounded on Thursday while trying to put out the flames at a shopping center.

The situation was also volatile outside Bangkok.

Nation Television reported one person was killed and 14 wounded in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen, one of several provinces where protests erupted Wednesday.

Among the torched buildings in Bangkok were Thailand’s stock exchange, main power company, banks, a movie theater and one of Asia’s largest shopping malls.

Troops in the central business district exchanged fire on Thursday morning with holdouts as locals looted a vast tent city the activists had cobbled together.

Since the Red Shirts began their protest in mid March, at least 83 people — mostly civilians — have been killed and nearly 1,800 wounded. Of those, 51 people died in clashes that started on May 13 after the army tried to blockade their three-square-kilometer camp.

City workers on Thursday removed debris and collected piles of garbage left in the streets. With military checkpoints coming down, residents in protest areas were able to leave home to shop.

Sansern said the arson and looting were “systematically planned” by Red Shirt leaders before they surrendered.

He said the military showed restraint.

“If we had the intention to attack civilians, the death toll would have been much higher,” he said.

It was unclear what the next move would be for the protesters who had demanded the ouster of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government and new elections. The protesters, many of them poor farmers or members of the urban underclass, say Abhisit came to power illegitimately and is oblivious to their plight.

The crackdown should silence the large number of government supporters who were urging a harder line, and the rioting that followed may extinguish some of the widespread sympathy for the protesters’ cause.

But that same violence also showed a serious intelligence lapse by the military, and the failure to secure areas of the capital raised doubt over the government’s ability to still unrest in the protesters’ heartland of the north and northeast.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 'Order restored' in Thai capital (news.bbc.co.uk)
• 'This is not the end,' Thai protesters say (seattletimes.nwsource.com)