PM: 70 injured in crackdown on protests

Protesters used buses to block roads in Bangkok.

By: AFP and Bangkok Post

Published: 13/04/2009

Troops fired teargas and rolling volleys of gunshots high in air in clashes with petrol bomb-hurling protesters in Bangkok on Monday as the government enforced a state of emergency.

Demonstrators charged the troops, driving hijacked buses into their lines, at a key junction in the business area of Din Daeng.

Soldiers unleashed long volleys of automatic-weapons fire into the air as they advanced on the red-shirted activists behind a curtain of teargas and gouts from water cannon.

The government, meanwhile, announced it was taking measures to secure major ports and airports, a day after embattled Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced a state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding provinces to curb increasingly violent protests against his four-month rule by supporters of fugitive politician Thaksin Shinawatra.

In a televised address on Monday, Mr Abhisit accused Thaksin's followers 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.''

Mr Abhisit said that 70 people had been injured, 23 of them soldiers. He rejected claims by a protest leader that four red-shirts had been killed. It was not true, he said. Four soldiers had suffered bullet wounds.

This is the biggest crisis that Mr Abhisit has faced since he came to power in December, following a controversial court ruling that drove Thaksin's allies out of office. Thaksin was removed by a coup in 2006.

Troops first moved in about 4am to secure busy Din Daeng intersection, with soldiers firing hundreds of rounds into the air after protesters pelted them with rocks and molotov cocktails, AFP reported.

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 at lunchtime.

Red-shirt protesters burn tires during a protest near the Government House on Monday, after troops launched a cracodown to enforce a state of emergency in Bangkok. Photo by Apichart Jinakul.

Protesters set fire to hijacked buses, but as soldiers advanced with water cannons, the demonstrators drove another three buses at the troops' lines. They retaliated with several minutes of shots fired into the air.

The protesters retreated towards nearby Victory Monument.

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.

Soldiers were deployed at train stations and at strategic locations including the electricity authority of Thailand head office.

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 outside Government House, which houses the prime minister's office.

"Abhisit, are you still a human being? This is a most inhuman act, to crack down on unarmed protesters,'' protest leader Jatuporn Prompan screamed at the crowd from an amplified platform.

It is the first time the army has taken action since Mr 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.

Mr Abhisit is under intense pressure to curb the unrest after the red-shirts stormed the venue of an Asian summit in Pattaya on Saturday, forcing its cancellation. Foreign leaders there for the meetings were hastily evacuated -- some by helicopter.

The trouble moved to Bangkok on Sunday, where demonstrators attacked Abhisit's motorcade at the Interior Ministry and fired shots in the air after police arrested the leader of the Pattaya summit raid, former singer Arisman Pongruangrong.

Demonstrations were also reported in northern Thailand, Thaksin's stronghold, where he remains popular among many of the rural poor, and near the entry roads to both bridges over the Mekong river to Laos - at Nong Khai and Mukdahan.

Thaksin 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 abuse of authority, stoked up his followers by phone late on Sunday, saying: "You don't have to be frightened of this state of emergency.''

He fled the country before his conviction, claiming the charges were political and he could not get a fair hearing.

His former lieutenants have remained in Thailand and are fighting the charges against them in the courts. Thaksin has been harshly criticised for not doing the same and instead directing and funding an uprising from the safety of his havens abroad..