THE LIGHTS have gone down at the razor wire-strewn Silom intersection in downtown Bangkok and volleys of gunfire ring out in the embattled commercial sector of the Thai capital. Soldiers with automatic weapons stand at every street corner, after days of bloody street fighting with anti-government protesters that have killed 30 people and wounded hundreds.
This section of the city is in lockdown – tyres burn and chaos reigns. About 5,000 Red Shirts have been encamped for six weeks in an occupied zone of about 3.5sq km, behind a barricade of bamboo poles, tyres and concrete blocks.
After tolerating the occupation for weeks, the government of prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has taken action. The army has given the Red Shirts a deadline of 3pm today to clear women and children from the site before they move in. It has also rejected calls for a UN-mediated ceasefire.
The city is awash with rumour about how Thailand’s worst political crisis in 20 years will play out. Tourism in Bangkok, one of the world’s most visited cities, has been devastated by the crisis and businesses are reeling from the ongoing instability.
Many of the casualties have come from snipers firing from skyscrapers near the protest site. The government insists it is only targeting terrorists among the Red Shirts and Abhisit vowed not to bow to the red-shirted protesters trying to overthrow his government.
“We cannot retreat now,” Abhisit said in a televised address to the nation. The government says the protest leaders are terrorists, after its offers of fresh elections in November were rejected, and they could face the death penalty.
The casualties are largely among the Red Shirts, who have few weapons beyond Molotov cocktails and homemade rockets, while the troops are armed with machine guns and shotguns.
The protesters, many of them poor farmers from rural Thailand, have fought back with a level of determination that has taken the army by surprise.
They are calling for the resignation of the Eton- and Oxford- educated Abhisit, who they say has joined with the Bangkok elite to bring down the democratically elected government, which supports exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006.
The protests are spreading to different parts of the city. Hundreds of Red Shirts have gathered in blue-collar Klong Toey and have attacked troops with petrol bombs, rocks and rockets. This seems to be a diversionary move to shift the military’s focus away from the main protest site. It could be that the protesters are setting up a second occupation zone in Klong Toey.
The government is trying to cut off supplies to the main protest site and water and food are running low, although the Red Shirts say they can last for days with existing reserves.