Thai Army Cites ‘Live Fire Zone’ as Clashes Continue

Thai Army Cites ‘Live Fire Zone’ as Clashes Continue
By THOMAS FULLER and SETH MYDANS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/world/asia/16thai.html?hp


BANGKOK — The Thai military declared a neighborhood of Bangkok a “live-fire zone” on Saturday and said it was calling in reinforcements as fighting spread to several areas in the city and the death toll in a three-day offensive against anti-government protesters rose to 17.

Gunfire and a series of explosions shook a neighborhood in central Bangkok that includes the city’s night bazaar and a kickboxing stadium. At least three people were shot in the head by what appeared to be sniper fire from tall buildings. In the Silom business district soldiers were seen positioned on rooftops and a waft of black smoke rose from fires set alight by protesters.

“I cannot say how many troops are deployed because of security concerns, but there will be reinforcements to help troops seal the area and step up pressure on protesters,” a spokesman for the army, Sansern Kaewkamnerd, told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

The number of people injured rose to 154 by Saturday afternoon, according to the government-run Erawan medical center, in some of the worst violence in two months of unrest.

The United States government said it was offering a voluntary evacuation of non-essential personnel from Bangkok and advised against all travel to the city, a revision from its previous stance of advising against non-essential travel.

“Eligible family members that choose to depart Bangkok may do so with assistance with the State Department,” said Cynthia Brown, a spokeswoman for the American embassy.

Around the area where troops clashed with the protesters, shops were closed and streets were nearly deserted.

In another neighborhood a few miles away, the military posted a banner, declaring a “Live firing zone.” The banner also included the words in English that were misspelled as “life firing zone.”

A Thai television station reported that the banner was later taken down.

“People should avoid the area,” Panitan Wattanayagorn, a government spokesman, said on television. “Let the officers do their work.”

On Friday troops fired tear gas and bullets at protesters, who responded with stones, slingshots and homemade rockets.

The fighting followed an assassination attempt on Thursday on a renegade general who had declared himself a protector of the protesters before he was critically wounded by a sniper’s bullet.

The antigovernment protesters, mostly poor rural residents known as red shirts, seized and vandalized several military vehicles, setting at least one truck on fire and cheering as a column of soldiers with riot shields looked on. Protesters pulled soldiers from their vehicles and beat them severely.

The standoff has paralyzed the Thai government and further fractured a society struggling to cope with the growing demands of its poor.

On Friday and Saturday, streets that would normally have been bustling with traffic were instead littered with stones and bottles and sealed off by soldiers building roadblocks with sandbags and coils of razor wire.

Troops in battle gear crouched behind traffic barriers, pointing their rifles at the bands of motorcycle riders who formed a mobile force for the protesters, while other troops ran along a highway overpass as traffic crawled behind them.

Although the violence has been confined largely to the city’s central area, reports of the political chaos in recent months have hurt tourism, one of the country’s main industries, and left some hotels in the downtown area just 20 percent full.

The army officer who was shot Thursday, Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol, was on life support late Friday, and his doctor said his chances of survival were “almost nil.”

Thai officials had blamed General Khattiya for playing a part in earlier violence and for blocking any chance of peace with protesters. Leaders of the red shirts had also disavowed him, but he nevertheless took control of security for the protesters and was supported by a small, hard-line group of demonstrators.

On Friday, the United States Embassy, which is near the disturbances, shut downamid the sounds of gunfire and explosions.

If it is not contained, the violence could widen into the kind of broader conflict that the government has been trying for weeks to avoid. Just several days ago, it appeared the long sit-in might end peacefully when the government offered to move up elections, a proposal that won tentative support from protest leaders.

But that support began faltering even before the general was shot, as the opposition movement bickered over whether the government was doing enough to meet its demands, including the dissolution of Parliament and the holding of a new election.

In response, the government withdrew its offer of an early election and said it would no longer negotiate with the red shirts.

Protest leaders have said that if the military tries to disperse them, supporters elsewhere in the country may stage similar takeovers of streets or government buildings.

However the occupation of parts of the capital ends, deep divisions and tensions are likely to persist in a country that is increasingly split between its poor and its urban elite. Over the past four years, political and personal enmities have hardened, making reconciliation more difficult.

Inside the barricaded protest area on Friday, leaders addressed thousands of demonstrators, vowing to hold their ground and resist any military incursion.

“They are tightening a noose on us, but we will fight to the end, brothers and sisters,” one a protest leader, Nattawut Saikua, told said to the crowd.

Another leader, Kokaew Pikulthong, issued what appeared to be a veiled threat to the government. In the event of a crackdown, he said in a telephone interview, protesters may be forced to break into shopping malls “to survive.”

The protest area, covering about one square mile on roads that surround a major intersection, has grown filthy and fly- infested, with piles of garbage stacking up since the government cut off waste collection and water deliveries for the rally’s storage tanks.

The deputy governor of Bangkok, Pornthep Techapaiboon, said that portable toilets in the protest area would remain in place for sanitary reasons, but that the workers who cleaned them had already withdrawn after being assaulted by protesters.

Because of new military checkpoints, the protesters, who sleep on mats on the street, can leave the site if they choose, but are not being allowed to return.

Four journalists have been wounded in the clashes so far, including a camera operator for a French television station and a Thai photographer who were shot on Friday, and a photographer for Thailand’s Nation newspaper shot in the leg Saturday.

At the perimeters of the conflict zone, demonstrators poured gasoline over high barricades of concrete blocks, tires, barbed wire and sharpened bamboo poles, threatening to ignite if attacked. They splashed oil on the street in front of one barricade and scattered round pellets to create a slippery dry-land moat.

Protesters attached homemade explosives to the ends of sticks, as they do during a traditional rocket festival, propping them inside plastic traffic cones before aiming and sending them with a whoosh in the direction of soldiers. They also fired in the direction of military helicopters that hovered overhead.

Some protesters wore motorcycle helmets and carried homemade weapons, including bows and arrows, slingshots and sharpened bamboo poles.

Some prepared to fling plastic bags filled with pungent fish sauce and hot chilies at soldiers.

Groups of self-appointed guards said they were ready to defend themselves against a military crackdown.

“We don’t have any weapons — we have only 2 hands and 2 legs,” said a so-called red guard who gave only his nickname, Yoa, for fear of retribution by the government. “We are always ready to fight.”

But he added: “If the soldiers manage to get in here, I may tell the guards to take off their black uniforms and run.”