Reds Increase Pressure
The leaders of the Reds have announced today they will vacate their 30,000 plus rally site at the Phanfa Bridge and convene all together with the 20,000 thousand who are already at the rally site at the Ratchaprasong intersection near the Chit Lom BTS Station. OMG! And these are just the ones who haven’t gone home on the 13th for the holiday! This will put additional pressure on the government to disband the parliament as this is the center of the business district, home to five-star hotels and major shopping centers.
My guesthouse is only a few yards off Sukhumvit 20 and over the last month, day and night, I have been hearing pick-ups and trucks with new and returning Red protesters from up north, singing and chanting to loud music, tooting horns and clapping their feet-shaped and heart-shaped quirky clappers coming to join the rally site down the road. And when Songkran is over on the 18th many of those who have gone home to celebrate the holiday will be coming back again!
They are sleeping on sheets of plastic out on the road in sweltering heat that nears 40C or 104F during the day and lets up little at night. The rally sites have been fitted out with tents, canteens and large stages, where loudspeakers blast out a mixture of fiery anti-government rhetoric and Thai country folk music.
Red Shirts have set up makeshift toilets hooked up to the local water systems, brought in trailers equipped with showers and use washing facilities at nearby temples and hospitals. At a first aid tent, 200 to 300 people are treated each day, mostly for heat exhaustion or the effects of air pollution.
OMG! But with rice fields going belly up in the drought, I guess the people feel they have nothing left to lose.
Tags: Bangkok, Thailand
Zoe
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