A crowd of angry protesters threw shoes and plastic bottles at Thai prime minister’s entourage after cornering him in an underground parking lot yesterday. He escaped unharmed.
Somchai Wongsawat’s security agents and police shielded him from the objects and huddled him into a waiting car, which sped off in a motorcade.
The protest was staged by more than 100 employees of the state-owned telecom operator TOT during a visit by Somchai to their headquarters outside Bangkok.
It marked the first time in Thailand’s months of political crisis that state employees have come into direct confrontation with the prime minister.
It was not, however, the first time that Somchai has had to make a quick getaway.
On Oct. 7, Somchai escaped a violent protest outside parliament by climbing over a back fence to safety. Riot police outside the building fired tear gas to disperse rowdy protesters, leaving hundreds injured and two dead.
Yesterday’s rally started outside the TOT headquarters, in the grounds of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. Somchai’s motorcade detoured into an underground parking lot to avoid the crowd shouting “Somchai, Murderer!” in reference to the two fatalities at the Oct. 7 protest.
Protesters swarmed around him in the parking lot, waving noisy plastic clappers shaped like giant hands.
After a meeting inside the building, Somchai exited through the main entrance, where more protesters had gathered. Some hurled clappers at his entourage and plastic water bottles and shoes.
Throwing shoes is particularly insulting in Thai culture, which considers feet the dirtiest part of the body.
Somchai, who took office last month, has come under growing pressure to step down to ease Thailand’s deepening political crisis. He is a brother-in-law of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, around whom the crisis revolves.
Thaksin was convicted of corruption for helping his wife buy a piece of cut-price government land and sentenced to two years in prison in a landmark ruling on Tuesday. But he is currently living in self-imposed exile in London and most Thais doubt he will ever serve time behind bars.
Pprosecutors began gathering evidence yesterday to submit to Britain asking for Thaksin’s extradition.
“The special litigation department will copy the verdict and translate it into English, before we prepare case details,” said Sirisak Tiyapan, international affairs director at the attorney general’s office. “All documents must be translated into English before we can prepare the petition and that will take considerable time ... in our petition, we have to prove Thaksin committed a crime that is common between the two countries.”
Once all the paperwork is complete, the attorney general will forward a petition to the foreign ministry.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver
RSS