BANGKOK: Thousands of Thai riot police were deployed yesterday to seize back protest sites around government buildings in Bangkok that have been occupied for months by demonstrators seeking to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Anti-government protesters have been disrupting life in the Thai capital since November, trying to oust Yingluck. They view her as a proxy for her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a self-exiled former premier who clashed with the establishment before he was overthrown by the army in a 2006 coup. “Our police are ready to reclaim space and will try to avoid violence,” National Security Council Chief Paradorn Pattanathabutr said.
Paradorn said 5,000 police had been assigned to the operation, which was targeting sites around the government district rather than intersections in the shopping and business centres that have been the focus of the biggest rallies. The protests have pitted the Bangkok-based middle class and royalist establishment against the mostly poorer, rural supporters of the Shinawatras from the north and northeast.
Police had until now largely avoided confronting the protesters, although 11 people have been killed and hundreds hurt in sporadic flare-ups. The past week has been quiet, with numbers dwindling at protest sites dotted around Bangkok.
A witness said there was no violence as at least 1,000 police cleared protesters from a site stretching from Royal Plaza to the United Nations headquarters. A few of the officers were armed but most carried just batons and shields.
Some protesters hurled abuse but otherwise police met no resistance in a historic area of the capital that includes Government House and the Metropolitan Police headquarters.
Reuters
