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Flashpoint in Thailand
Sydney Morning Herald - May 17, 2010
Ben Doherty, Bangkok – The conflict in Thailand has reached a turning point, with the army demanding all women and children leave a fortified protest camp in the centre of Bangkok by 6pm, Sydney time, today as the death toll from four days of bloody street battles rose to 30.
The Thai army has warned protesters to leave the camp before they begin a final offensive to remove anybody left behind.
There were plans for a curfew which the army later dropped as bloodshed continued unabated for a fourth straight day, with more than 230 people injured.
Foreign embassies have closed their doors, and several countries, including the United States, have issued statements warnings citizens not to travel to Bangkok under any circumstances.
The Department of Foreign Affairs advised people to reconsider travel to anywhere in Thailand because of "widening political unrest and civil disorder occurring in Bangkok and other parts of the country".
Australia's embassy will not open today after gun battles raged on the street outside over the past two days.
Soldiers have strung razor wire across Sathorn Road, close to the embassy, while protesters burned telephone boxes, tyres and car parts outside the embassy. Thai media have reported two protesters were shot by snipers in a closed service station next door to the Australian mission.
As the army slowly strangled the Red Shirts' central city protest site yesterday, they declared two parts of the city, at Din Daeng and Bon Kai, live-fire zones. Senior generals have threatened that anybody walking into those zones will be shot on sight.
In response, the Red Shirts sought to gain whatever extra territory they could across the city, hastily constructing new barricades made from tyres and car parts, and where threatened, setting them on fire. Several houses were also burned, and there were reports closed businesses and buildings in the no-man's land between the Red Shirts and the army were being attacked.
The army has not yet taken any territory from the Red Shirts, but having strangled the protesters' supply of food and water, and cut off power and communications to their camp, they are preparing for a final, violent, push to remove them.
The Red Shirts have been on the streets since March 12, and have occupied the city's shopping and finance districts for more than a month.
An army spokesman, Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd, said a temple within the Red Shirt zone has been set up as a meeting place for people who wished to leave. But yesterday, save for a small group of elderly women and some children, the offer was largely ignored. The army said it planned to allow neutral organisations, such as the Red Cross, into the protest area to encourage demonstrators to leave.
Late yesterday, some Red Shirt leaders indicated they would be prepared to return to the negotiating table, but only if troops were immediately withdrawn from the streets and the UN brought in to broker peace.
"We want the UN to moderate it because we do not trust anyone else. There is no group in Thailand that is neutral enough," Reds co-leader Nattawut Saikua said.
But the government appeared determined to continue with its plan to remove the protesters.
"If they really want to talk, they should not set conditions like asking us to withdraw troops," Korbsak Sabhavasu, the Prime Minister's secretary-general, said. The announcement of the curfew brought a wave of anger from demonstrators, but the army later backed down on the proposal, saying it was unnecessary.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said any Australian in Bangkok in need of urgent assistance should contact the embassy by phone. (With Tom Arup)
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