About 2,000 anti-government protesters marched past Bangkok’s upmarket shopping malls yesterday, accusing police of brutality, upping pressure on the increasingly isolated prime minister.
In a repeat of a similar rally on Friday, supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) handed out leaflets and CDs showing graphic images of protesters injured in a deadly clash with police earlier this month.
“The police try to distort the truth. I insist that what we bring is the whole truth,” Somsak Kosaisuk, one of the PAD leaders, told crowds of people dressed in yellow shirts, which shows loyalty to the Thai king.
Two people were killed and nearly 500 injured on Oct. 7 when police fired tear gas to prevent thousands of PAD supporters from blocking parliament, prompting some protesters to fight back.
A police officer at the scene early yesterday estimated that about 1,300 protesters had turned out and crowds later swelled, blocking traffic on normally busy roads.
About 300 police officers stood on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, the prime ministers of Cambodia and Thailand plan to hold talks this week in Beijing after a long-running border dispute escalated into a deadly shoot-out, a Cambodian official said.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen expects to meet Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat on the sidelines of a meeting between leaders of Asian and European nations on Friday and Saturday.
“The prime minister will bilaterally meet with the Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao [溫家寶] and we have planned to meet with the Thai prime minister as well,” Hun Sen’s adviser Sri Thamrong said.
Somchai later told reporters in Bangkok that no specific meeting had been arranged with Hun Sen.
“The Cambodia issue needs to be discussed between the two countries,” he said. “[Talks] depend on whether there is an appropriate atmosphere and an appropriate time available or not.”
Thai and Cambodian military officials are scheduled to hold talks later this week.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
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