Global Issues
THAILAND: As Military Threat Rises, Protesters Dig in Heels
Even as the Thai military warned that its troops would fire live bullets in any imminent confrontation with anti-government protesters in Bangkok, women like Supaporn Sonnorp did not flee.
From her street stall, she continued selling feet — that is, the red-and-white plastic feet that red-shirted protesters use as clappers and carry around with them.
The 45-year-old Supaporn says she has been doing brisk business. 'I sell 3,000 feet clappers a day,' said the native of the Thai capital who is an ardent supporter of the protest movement that rallies under the banner of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
'I will stay here no matter the threats from the government or the military,' she added. 'This is not a dangerous place.'
Her defiance is shared by other UDD supporters such as Pranee Malaikhawan, a 50-year-old rice farmer from the north-eastern province of Chaiya Phum. She lined up on Tuesday afternoon with some 200 others from this kingdom’s rural heartland to sign up to become new members of the UDD.
Pranee, like other UDD loyalists, wore the signature red shirt of this protest movement, which has converted the ritzy shopping heartland of Bangkok into a political battleground since the first weekend of this month. They are agitating for the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and call for a general election.
'We are not scared,' said Pranee, echoing the views of other red shirts waiting to pay the 50 baht (1.50 U.S. dollar) fee to get the red UDD card.
'Between 3,000 and 3,500 people sign up for their UDD membership cards daily,' said Jakree Kanachansiratip, who oversees the sign-up operation on a tree-lined street sandwiched by upscale hotels like the Four Seasons and the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, whose century-old horse racing track is a haven for this South-east Asian nation’s elite.
The UDD membership card displays the organisation’s political sentiments. On the rear, it has language hinting that the 16-month-old Abhisit administration came to power through a backroom deal shaped by the country’s powerful military rather than through a popular vote.
At another table a short distance from Jakree’s tent, UDD staffers were collecting voluntary contributions to help cover the costs of their round-the- clock rally of political rage. 'There are days when we collect over one million baht (31,250 U.S. dollars) in contributions,' says Kokaew Pikulthong, a UDD leader. 'People give from 100 baht to over 10,000 baht. Some business groups are also helping us.'
It is an income flow that the UDD needs, admitted Kokaew in an interview, because the daily cost to run this rally is one million baht. 'We have to pay for food, water, electricity, portable toilets.'
But as they prepare for a longer haul on the streets of Bangkok, UDD leaders face the ominous sign of another bloody showdown between Thais troops and the UDD’s supporters. To steel their movement, they are encouraging red shirts like Sukai Kongpunglas to sharpen bamboo poles into spears to use as potential weapons if troops come to Rajprasong, the shopping district they overran.
'We will use these weapons to fight back if the military comes into our area,' Sukai said during a break from his labour. 'It is not enough to have bare hands to push the soldiers out.'
As night fell on Tuesday, the road from Bangkok’s business district to Rajprasong was sealed off by a thick barrier of bamboo spears and rubber tyres. Trained UDD guards mounted a vigil to watch heavily armed Thai troops across the road who were deployed this week to prevent the UDD from expanding its protest site.
The Abhisit administration’s warnings that the Rajprasong area is a 'dangerous place' that has been infiltrated by 'terrorists' has been ratcheted up by a military threat to the protesters. 'Security forces will begin firing tear gas' at protesters to contain them, media reports quoted army spokesman Col Sunsern Kaewkumnerd as saying. If that initial step fails, 'soldiers will start taking decisive action with live bullets,' he added.
For its part, the army says potential targets are the agent provocateurs that fired at troops from behind red shirt ranks during a botched military crackdown on a UDD protest site in the historic part of Bangkok. That Apr. 10 clash between heavily armed troops and UDD protesters resulted in 25 people killed and over 800 injured.
'A crackdown is certain. The only question left is when,' wrote Sopon Ongkara, a columnist in Tuesday’s edition of the English-language daily ‘The Nation’. 'The military spokesman at the operations headquarters has talked tough over the past few days. Terms such as ‘acceptable collateral damage’ have been heard, to test public reaction.'
Politicians sympathetic to the UDD warn that Thailand’s apparent march toward a military solution to get protesters off the streets could inflame an already volatile situation. 'You cannot say that there are terrorists in the crowd and that they will do anything to get rid of them,' said Chaturon Chaiseng, a former cabinet minister. 'The emergency law permits soldiers to do anything.'
'It is dangerous that they will use all kinds of measures to separate the ‘terrorists’ from the people,' he told a small group of foreign correspondents. 'It is problematic that the (military) is trying to threaten people not to join the demonstrations.'
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service