Bangkok resident and SAJ1 contributor Tom Vater dispatches from a city under siege.
It´s not easy to write about war. Harder still to write about war at home. Bangkok is my home and tonight, parts of the city were on the verge of giving way to total chaos. After eight weeks of street protests by the so-called Red Shirts aiming to force the Thai government to resign and call elections, the incessant heat, both political and sweat inducing, is catching up with both the demonstrators and the military. The walls of restraint built deeply into Thai culture are crumbling. The city is on the edge.
This afternoon, the government announced it would cut of electricity to the Ratchaprasong area, Bangkok’s flashiest shopping district, where the Red Shirts have been camped out for weeks. At the Siam Square entrance to the Red zone, where I’d come to meet a friend, a motorcycle taxi driver tells us that there had been bombs and shooting in Sala Daeng and that the infamous Sae Daeng, a renegade major general working for the Red Shirts, known to have an alleged penchant for death squads, and one of the more radical elements of the Red movement, has been shot by a sniper.
I arrive in the Sala Daeng area (near the famous Patpong go-go bar strip) at about 19.30pm. Soldiers are patrolling with automatic weapons near the Surawong entrance to Patpong. The restaurants are not full, but the street is still fairly busy with girls in hot-pants and ageing western sex tourists, undeterred by the threat of violence. Keen one might say…
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