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- š¹š A quick check-in on Bangkok
š¹š A quick check-in on Bangkok
State of Emergency declared after protests face off with monarch
Hello friends!
No premium today because I spent way too long trying to cram a trimesterās worth of facts into my brain. Did it work? Didnāt feel like it! Premium readers can catch up on the rest of the region over the weekend with me.
But, I do want to take an hour or two today to crack into Thailand because I cannot believe what Iāve seen. Protestors took the fight ā and the three-finger salute ā directly to King Maha Vajiralongkorn as police tried to clear a path for the royal motorcade. Even the most casual of observers understand the stakes there.
Despite it only being 6 am in Bangkok, most of what Iāve written here has had to be deleted this morning with the news of an early morning announcement of a state of emergency. Keep an eye on Thailand today, this feels very tense.
See you very soonErin Cook
(This snap comes care of Pravit Rojanaphruk, the journalist and Twitter-must-follow, who documented the moment pro-democracy protestors and the King met)
Thousands of protestors took to the streets in Bangkok Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the October 14, 1973 uprising. The events of 1973 have an unusually robust Wikipedia entry and I recommend reading it in full. The march began at the Democracy Monument and continued up to Government House, very close to Royal Plaza.
It started tensely with the arrest of 21 activists camping out for the event on Tuesday. Associated Press reports law enforcement moved into a makeshift camp set up by activists from the northeast of the country who had come to the capital to protest. Which Iām certain is a story weāve heard before, no? āThe Thai governmentās breakup of a peaceful democracy protest at Bangkokās Democracy Monument just proved the protestersā point,ā said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement published to the NGOās website.
Al Jazeera has a nice, short photo essay from yesterday which shows just how dense the rally was, as well as a familiar snap of men in yellow and red shirts facing off.
Thai Enquirer alleges reports of government and other officials bussing in yellow shirt loyalists to the sites of protests. It also reports many of the yellow shirts said they were employed by state enterprises and were not being paid to attend, rather witness the royal motorcade.
A video that is being widely shared on social media showing riot control police pushing back anti-government protesters to allow the royal motorcade to pass through. This is an unprecedented scene that no-one expected to see #ąø”ą¹ąøąø14ąøąøøąø„ąø²#Thailand
ā Richard Barrow (@RichardBarrow)
11:22 AM ā¢ Oct 14, 2020
Following the now-infamous motorcade incident, protestors promised to set up camp at the site for at least three days or until Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha resigns. But thatās unlikely to last much longer.
As I began drafting this the Thai government has announced a state of emergency which forbids gatherings of more than five people. The emergency decree also bans the publication of news or messaging which may āundermine national security.ā āIt is extremely necessary to introduce an urgent measure to end this situation effectively and promptly to maintain peace and order,ā Reuters reports from a state television message.
Weāll be back with updates soon.
Twitter cooperated with the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) in the investigation and analysis which revealed that 926 accounts with 21, 385 tweets linked to the Thai Royal Army supported the government and the Army and targeted opposition parties and their allies, especially the Future Forward Party (FFP) and the Move Forward Party (MFP).
The paper stated that most accounts were created between December 2019 and January 2020 and were most active in February 2020 during the Korat mass shooting perpetrated by an Army officer and the dissolution of the FFP. Most network accounts had low engagement on Twitter and no followers, left their bio sections empty and used stolen profile pictures.
Thai kingās sojourn in Bavaria causes headache for Berlin (Financial Times)
Angela Merkelās government has warned Thailand the Thai king should stop conducting state business from German soil, in an unusual intervention that comes at a time of nationwide student protests in the kingdom.
It has long been an open secret that King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who was crowned Rama X last year, lives for much of the time in Germany. German media have reported that he stays with his household in a hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Bavarian Alps.
Green party politicians in the state of Bavaria, who have questioned the kingās tax status, say they have established that he was living in a villa in Tutzing on Starnberger Lake near Munich at the time of his late father King Bhumibol Adulyadejās death in 2016.
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