BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai troops encircled thousands of protesters encamped near the prime minister’s office in Bangkok early today after a day of street clashes in which two people were killed and dozens injured.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who declared a state of emergency in Bangkok on Sunday, urged the protesters to leave. He told Reuters his aim was to restore law and order but said their rights would be respected.
In an interview with Reuters, Abhisit ruled out an immediate dissolution of parliament and said he was not interested in making a deal with exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the figurehead of the protest movement.
Speaking of the “Red Shirt” protesters, he said: “If they are not inciting violence, if they are not engaged in riots, if they don’t have weapons, then they can exercise their rights.”
With Humvees and armoured personnel carriers, the army and police set up a perimeter around an estimated 6,000 demonstrators, including women, children and a few Buddhist monks, who were calling for the resignation of Abhisit.
But some of demonstrators prepared for a confrontation, felling trees and laying them across a main road between the troops and the centre of the protest, stockpiling rocks and bricks and dousing disabled buses in the street with petrol.
The protest stems from an intractable dispute pitting royalists, the military and the urban middle-class against a poorer rural majority loyal to the exiled former prime minister.
Abhisit said in the interview that dissolving parliament could lead to electoral violence. But he said he was willing to listen to the grievances of some of the protesters.
Yesterday black smoke billowed over the city of 12 million people after protesters set fire to several buses to block the troops. The side of one government building was ablaze.
Soldiers drove them back with repeated charges and fusillades of assault rifle fire, aimed at the sky and the crowd.
One person was shot dead in fighting between protesters and residents angry about the demonstrations, Satit Wongnongtaey, a minister at the prime minister’s office, said on television.
A hospital said another person was also fatally shot in the violence under similar circumstance, and there was sporadic fighting between protesters and locals in the evening.
The Emergency Medical Institute said last night 94 people, including soldiers, were injured in the clashes.
Thaksin, ousted in 2006 coup and living in exile, told CNN from an undisclosed location: “Many people are dying… They even take the bodies on the military trucks and take them away.”
The demonstrations have further hobbled a country reeling from political chaos last year and the global financial crisis.
Rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, both of which already have a negative outlook on Thailand’s sovereign ratings, said the renewed political unrest increased the risk of a downgrade.
“Tourism can rebound, but investor confidence will be very hard to get back,” said S&P analyst Kim Eng Tan. “Going forward we expect investors will become a lot more risk averse.”
Thailand’s top military commander, General Songkitti Chakabakr, said in a televised statement yesterday that the committee charged with restoring order would strive “through every peaceful means” to bring the situation back to normal as soon as possible.
