Thailand emergency after unprecedented protest
Thailand’s government declared a strict new state of emergency for the capital yesterday, a day after a student- led protest against the country’s traditional establishment saw an extraordinary moment in which demonstrators heckled a royal motorcade.
After the pre- dawn declaration, riot police moved in to clear out demonstrators who after a day of rallies and confrontation had gathered outside Prime Minister Prayuth Chanocha’s office to push their demands, which include the former general’s resignation, constitutional changes and reform of the monarchy.
Several top leaders of the protest movement were taken into custody, with one later declaring on his Facebook page that he had been denied access to a lawyer and was being forced onto a helicopter and taken to a city in the country’s north.
Police said they had made 22 arrests.
Despite a new ban against large public gatherings, thousands of people rallied again in another area of the city. The new gathering, which appeared to have drawn more than the 8000 people police said had attended the previous night’s rally, lasted about six hours and began winding down shortly after 10pm.
“It shows that no matter how many are arrested, new faces will join the protest,” Patsaravalee “Mind” Tanakitvibulpon, an engineering student and protest organiser, told the online publication The Standard.
The text of the emergency declaration said it was needed because “certain groups of perpetrators intended to instigate an untoward incident and movement in the Bangkok area by way of various methods and via different channels, including causing obstruction to the royal motorcade”.
The protest on Wednesday in Bangkok’s historic district was the third major gathering by student- led activists who have been pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable — and legal — language by publicly questioning the role of Thailand’s monarchy in the nation’s power structure.
Thailand’s royal family has long been considered sacrosanct and a pillar of Thai identity. King Maha Vajiralongkorn and other key members of the royal family are protected by a lese majeste law that has been used to silence critics who risk up to 15 years in prison if deemed to have insulted the institution.
The protest was complicated by the presence of royalist counterprotesters who had gathered to show support for the government and to greet the royal family as they travelled from a religious ceremony in the area.
That led to protesters demonstrating just metres from the royal motorcade. Such actions are unprecedented in Thailand, where those waiting for a royal motorcade regularly sit on the ground or prostrate themselves.
Some experts say a line may have been crossed. “What seemed to be a low- boil stalemate that the Prayuth government was managing with reasonable success has now, following the incident involving the procession of the queen’s motorcade down a street in which an active protest was under way and the arrests of protest leaders become a fullblown crisis,” said Michael Montesano, co- ordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme at the ISEAS- Yusof Isak Institute in Singapore. “Unlike even 48 hours ago, the country is in dangerous territory now.”