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Arrests begin as Thai Prime Minister declares emergency
Sydney Morning Herald - April 13, 2009
Tom Allard Herald in Bangkok and agencies – Tanks and armoured vehicles rumbled across Bangkok yesterday after the Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, cracked down on protesters leading the most serious challenge yet to his four-month rule.
A day after wrecking the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit, demonstrators fired into the air and attacked a car in his convoy as he was being driven from the Interior Ministry where he had imposed a state of emergency minutes earlier.
Mr Abhisit said he was safe and unhurt after the incident, and called for calm while threatening the use of force to restore order.
Mr Abhisit, a relative novice, was humiliated by the summit's failure and charges of gross incompetence have been levelled against him and the security forces who were supposed to protect the five-star hotel where the summit was being held in the beach resort of Pattaya.
"The Government has tried all along to avoid violence but the protest has developed and they [the protesters] have used actions incompatible with the constitution," Mr Abhisit said in a televised speech. "Now the Government is unable to avoid this state of emergency."
Police arrested Arisman Pongreungrong, a former pop singer and the leader of the "red shirts", protesters formally known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship. They are aligned with the exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Arisman would be charged with causing social unrest and attempting to kidnap Mr Abhisit, police said. The red shirts responded that they would march on police headquarters and demand their leader's release.
Mr Arisman's arrest was the first step in a campaign of "legal actions" flagged by Mr Abhisit to restore law and order.
"The Government may well clamp down and if they do clamp down, it could be very harsh," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University. "They lost face big time here."
It took only minutes for several hundred protesters to breach the security cordon around the ASEAN summit on Saturday. Police and soldiers had been instructed not to use force to repel the red shirts.
The security forces had been relying on locals in blue garb and wielding clubs and slingshots to deal with the red shirts. However, a clash between the two sides on Saturday enraged the protesters, who quickly marched to the summit venue, pushing back police lines before smashing through a glass door and pouring inside.
Before the summit, Mr Abhisit had repeatedly assured world leaders and the Thai people that the event would run smoothly.
Analysts said any heavy-handed measures to disperse an emboldened red shirt movement posed risks of further chaos.
Mr Abhisit is open to charges of hypocrisy, as he rose to power following protests by the "yellow shirts" – the People's Alliance for Democracy aligned to the country's business, military and public service elites – who brought Bangkok to a standstill late last year. There have been no legal sanctions against them.
As well as demanding that Mr Abhisit stand down, the red shirts want the country's privy council, the formal advisory body to the monarch, to be removed.
The privy council is supposedly neutral but its head, Prem Tinsulanonda, a retired general and former prime minister, has expressed support for Mr Abhisit and the red shirts see him as the mastermind behind the military coup in 2006 that overthrew Thaksin and forced him into exile.
Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon found guilty in absentia of corruption, addressed a red shirt rally in Bangkok via a video link from the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. Local media quoted him yesterday as saying he regretted the violence that led to the ASEAN summit being cancelled.
The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was on his way to attend the summit but turned back in mid-air to Canberra after it was cancelled.
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