Thai army puts off plan for siege of redshirt protesters
Thai army puts off plan for siege of redshirt protesters
The Thai government today cancelled plans for a November election and scrapped talks with protesters who have been occupying Bangkok’s commercial district for nearly six weeks, but softened its line on an earlier crackdown threat.
Hours after announcing they would shut off power and cut water supplies from midnight to thousands of anti-government protesters, authorities postponed the plan, saying it would hurt residents in the upmarket district more than the demonstrators.
But the government said it would take other measures to seal off the central Bangkok area packed with hotels, embassies, businesses, high-end apartments and two public hospitals.
“Tonight, we will start preventing taxis and cars delivering protesters into the area and tomorrow, we will divert some public transportation into the area as well,” the army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd told reporters. “Details are still being worked out.”
The threats follow the unravelling of a peace plan proposed last week by the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to end a political crisis that has killed 29 people, paralysed parts of Bangkok and slowed growth in south-east Asia’s second-largest economy.
Leaders of the mostly rural and urban poor protesters remained defiant, refusing to leave their 1.2 sq mile (3 sq km) encampment and challenging the government from behind medieval-like walls built of tyres and sharpened bamboo staves.
“We will die here if we must. Your threat will not work,” Nattawut Saikua, a protest leader, said to cheering supporters after the government said it may use force to disperse them if other measures fail.
The decision to postpone cutting off water and power followed an outcry from residents, thousands of whom were urged by their landlords to leave and find temporary accommodation.
Abhisit had offered an election on 14 November – a year before one is due – to try to end rallies that began in mid-March with a demand for an immediate poll.
The red-shirted protesters, mostly supporters of the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006, accepted the election date – an offer now withdrawn – but are pushing other demands.
They say the British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit lacks a popular mandate after coming to power in a parliamentary vote 17 months ago and heading a coalition the military helped cobble together after the courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin party.
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