So Sunday was three days since the last major demonstration, in which hundreds of thousands of Thais marched to the Government House (sort of like the Whitehouse) and presented the Prime Minister (military dictator) with a giant novelty resignation letter. At that time, the defacto leaders of that protest said we’d return in 3 days if PM Prayut didn’t resign.
Since then, the super-martial law (which allowed the government to shut down any business, including public transportation) has been lifted–most likely because it was deemed illegal in multiple court cases, and because the private public transportation companies and malls didn’t like being shut down (protests are great for business).
I believe the 21 protest leaders are still being held, though I feel like I see things about some being released and re-arrested from time to time. Rung and Penguin (main leaders) appear to be held longterm on the charges of disrespecting the Queen as she drove through their protest, unannounced.
There were some other Yellow Shirt (conservative royalists) protests, but they’re not too well documented on Twitter, so I had trouble following them. I saw some pictures that made them look like real protests–as many as 5,000-10,000 people. But…some seemed like they might be photoshopped. And in response to this some pro-democracy peeps on Twitter made some ridiculous photoshops as satire (people standing on roofs, people replaced by swarms of minions), and…then some Yellow Shirt accounts claimed THOSE were real. I suppose I should watch some livestreams to get an accurate assessment.
On Sunday, no follow-up march was announced. This isn’t too unusual for this movement. Unless a date is set day-of, it’s usually not kept. This could be down to organizational chaos, though…if it’s a strategy it’s worked really well. Each time it’s happened, we get reporting on how the police and military has mobilized, and it’s informed the real protest that follows.
In this case, the organizers had said they’d return to the Government House, so a scant grouping of Yellow Shirts showed up there (maybe 50-100?), the police set up barricades, and the city government donated mobile toilet trucks (Thai version of porta-potties). Let me tell you: they don’t do that when WE protest (though that Thai singer sometimes does).
On Saturday the big story was a video of the and Queen at a Yellow Shirt protest, and the King right up against a cell phone video, thanking the guy. It took a while for me to get why this mattered, but eventually I got it: this was proof that the King is aware of what’s going on and siding with Yellow Shirts and the military. This could be assumed before, but cannot be denied now. He can’t pretend to be politically aloof.
Even though nothing was really announced for Sunday, people were restless, so I started to hear about people gathering at a giant intersection among four or five luxury malls whose name translates to The King’s Road (a common protest location) at the usual protest start time of 4PM.
My GF called me at 6PM to say that she thought she could handle it, so we hustled to center city. By the time we were there it was night and the crowd was pretty massive? Probably about 100,000? There was no big theme to this protest–it was just people keeping the flame alive. One guy speaking when we got there was doing a bit of a standup set. Apparently, he was the last of the leadership of the Free Youth movement to be outside of jail. He was saying, “It’s just me! I’m lonely! They arrested me, but just threw me back. I’m like Naruto–they can’t catch me!”
In my next post, I’ll give you guys a little video/pic tour of the event which hopefully gives a sense of the scale.