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BANGKOK: Defiant protesters have ignored orders to
leave Bangkok’s besieged airports and are faced off with Thai
police, raising fears of clashes as crippling anti-government
demonstrations escalated.
Tensions mounted with Thai
television showing angry demonstrators arguing with police on a road
to the main Suvarnabhumi airport as officers tried to set up a
checkpoint to stop more people flocking to the protest site.
Despite Prime Minister Somchai
Wongsawat’s declaration of state of emergency rule at the airports
on Wednesday, protesters trying to topple his elected government
remain entrenched, barricading themselves in with barbed wire and
tires.
“If we have to die today, I am
willing to die. This is a fight for dignity,” said Sondhi
Limthongkul, the founder of the People’s Alliance for Democracy
protest movement, said on his private television station.
Police said they had given formal
warnings overnight to protesters at both Suvarnabhumi international
airport and the smaller, domestic Don Mueang airport to leave
immediately or face action to evict them.
“Police have already issued two
warnings since Friday to ask them to leave,” Major General Piya
Sorntrakoon, deputy commander of Thailand’s central region,
told Agence France-Presse.
At Suvarnabhumi, demonstrators
headed inside as rumors of a police raid circulated. Protesters set
up a medical corner to treat anyone injured if clashes broke out,
while water and other supplies were stacked up.
Some women carried pink helmets,
readying themselves for any action. Children are also among the
crowd.
Suvarnabhumi has been shuttered
since Tuesday and every day the siege continues, 30,000 more
passengers miss flights and the kingdom loses $7 million in tourism
revenue, ministers and officials have said.
Airport authorities said that
both airports would not resume operations until Monday.
The army chief has said he does
not want to remove the protesters for fear of bloody clashes and on
Wednesday urged Somchai to dissolve parliament and hold new
elections—calls the premier promptly rejected.
Government spokesman Suparat
Nakbunnam has said Somchai would remain in the northern city of
Chiang Mai indefinitely, a pro-government stronghold, “as there
are still uncertainties in the tensions between the government and
army.”
Coup will bring bloodshed
Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra has warned of bloodshed if the army stages another coup
to end the political turmoil paralyzing the kingdom.
Thaksin also said in a video
interview posted on a reporter’s blog that the army had a duty to
enforce law and order as protesters force the closure of Bangkok’s
two airports.
“If the coup were to happen
there will be bloodshed—it will not be an easy coup like in the
past because the people in Thailand, now they are in hardship,” he
said in the interview with US blogger Thomas Crampton.
“They [army] are government
officials, their salary paid by taxpayers, so they have to do
whatever [is the] wish of the whole citizens of Thailand, not just
minority groups,” he said.
“They must respect democracy,
they must play by rules, they must do their work . . . being neutral
means you have to observe the law, do what benefits the whole
country.”
--AFP
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