2014-06-07

Anti-coup protesters have been warned. The junta is frightened by sometimes silent book reading, by three-finger salutes and small groups of people holding A4-size signs with dangerous messages like, “No coup” and “Democracy Now.”

These threats that frighten the well-armed and dangerous military cause the junta to “warn … it could take stricter measures against protests on the eve of a possible rally to demand the armed forces go back to their barracks and return power to civilians.”

Last week they mobilized 6,000 troops in Bangkok against a couple of hundred protesters. What will it be this week? 7,000 or 10,000?

Update 1: Thai PBS reports that a meeting of the junta’s stormtroopers led by Police General Somyos Poompanmuang decided that 15 companies of police and 27 companies of army troopers would be sufficient for the suppression of anti-coup protesters. In a modern military, a company typically consists of 80–250 soldiers, so this could mean 3,300 to 10,500 personnel. We guess that several hundred plainclothes spies will also be sent into action to grab and arrest protesters.

These personnel were to be deployed to “BTS sky trains to keep watch on potential protesters.” The BTS, owned by one of Thailand’s richest families, accused several times of corruption, has been “asked to provide the authorities of video footages showing commuters at stations suspected to be used by the protesters to travel to any of the planned protest sites.”

Protesters are expected at “five locations.” These are: “Victory Monument, Siam Paragon shopping mall, Suvarnabhumi international airport, McDonald outlet at Amarin shopping mall, Ratchaprasong and Wat Phra Kaew or the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.” The junta’s troops will establish “checkpoints on these road accesses … to screen the people to look out for protesters.” Protesters will be no doubt be separated from serious shoppers at royalist and royal-owned and invested malls.

Reflecting the ideological connections between extremist yellow shirts and the current military regime, “Pol Gen Somyos warned whose who planned to join the protest either voluntarily or involuntarily to think twice that they might be used by foreign media to tarnish the reputation of Thailand. He accused foreign media of harbouring ill-intent against Thailand.“

Update 2: This video shows one protester, of a very small number who were prepared to risk arrest, being grabbed and taken away by fully armed soldiers.

PPT is told that he briefly held up the 3-finger salute, causing the uniformed thugs to descend on him. Some of the soldiers and other security officers seem mildly perturbed that such official repression is filmed.

 

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