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Protesters in Thai Capital Retreat
Exhausted and outnumbered by government troops, anti-government protesters ended weeks of street demonstrations Tuesday, offering a respite for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva after street battles Monday that left 2 people dead and 123 injured.
“As you can see, the situation is almost completely back to normal,” Mr. Abhisit said in a conciliatory address on national television. “We must come together to bring peace back to our society. I am ready to talk to anyone.”
Under the watchful eyes of well-armed security forces, ragged and emotional protesters emerged from the streets around the prime minister’s office, which they had blockaded since late March.
“This is a tactical retreat,” said Sukun Saiburi, a trinket seller from a province near Bangkok, as he shuffled from the protest site.
Mr. Abhisit announced an extension of the ongoing traditional Thai new year holiday until the end of the week to give officials time to clean up the roads in the wake of the protests. He said the government would not immediately lift the state of emergency in Bangkok that was decreed on Sunday.
A small group of protesters remained near Bangkok’s grand palace, the prime minister said.
The collapse of the protest is a mitigated victory for the government, which kept its promise not to evict the protesters by violence, but which suffered the deeply embarrassing incursion by protesters into a regional summit meeting on Saturday, forcing the meeting’s cancellation.
The decision to end the protest appears to weaken the position of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who backed the protest group financially and who last week called for a “people’s revolution.” Mr. Thaksin, the chief antagonist of the current government, is living overseas and seeking the return of $2 billion seized by the government in the September 2006 military coup that ousted him. One person leaving the protest site Tuesday hauled away a life-size effigy of Mr. Thaksin.
A Bangkok court issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for 14 protest leaders, including Thaksin, The Associated Press reported. A police spokesman, Suporn Pansua, said the arrest warrants charge them with inciting a public disturbance and illegal assembly.
The protesters were demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit, but their anger was also focused at influential advisers to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. They accused the advisors of being involved in the coup against Mr. Thaksin and of meddling in politics generally. The unrest came at a time of anxiety over the succession of the 81-year-old monarch, who has provided the country with stability and cohesion during his more than six decades on the throne.
Leaders of the protest movement, known as the “red shirts,” surrendered to the police but vowed to fight on. Protesters “can come back and fight again,” Jatuporn Phromphan, a protest leader, said according to the Associated Press. “Democracy will not end today.” The police said protest leaders were undergoing questioning.
The government offered to shuttle the protesters, many of whom are from northern and northeastern provinces, to bus stations around Bangkok, a cordial end to what were violent confrontations Sunday and Monday.
On Monday, protesters burned buses, hijacked tankers filled with natural gas and taunted soldiers by throwing firebombs. Troops fired into the air on several occasions and charged on the protesters, who retreated to the area around the prime minister’s office.
Armored vehicles and ranks of soldiers with riot shields and assault weapons surrounded what the government said was 2,000 remaining protesters early Tuesday before protest leaders announced their surrender.
“We are ending the demonstration this time not because we are giving up but because we are afraid that there will be loss of life,” Weera Musikapong, a protest leader, announced to his followers.
The end of the protest is a relief for Thailand’s substantial tourism industry, which was expecting 14 million foreign visitors this year. The country’s image as a laid-back holiday destination has suffered under the cumulative effects of three years of political crisis, including the weeklong closure of Bangkok’s airports by royalist protesters last year. With hotel occupancy down, the country’s tourism authority is now promoting the country as an “amazing value.” By THOMAS FULLER and SETH MYDANS for the New York Times. For more news and information, click the link below for the NYTimes.com Janesara Fugal contributed reporting from Bangkok.
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