Thai prime minister's house daubed with blood of protestors
Anti-government protestors in Thailand spill bottles of their own blood outside home of country's PM in Bangkok
Wednesday, 17, Mar 2010 03:23
By Matthew Champion.
Anti-government protestors in Thailand have spilled bottles of their own blood outside the home of the country's prime minister in Bangkok.
Security forces had blocked the approach to Abhisit Vejjajiva's compound in the capital's Sukhumvit district but allowed about a dozen demonstrators to throw blood at the building's gates and walls.
Protestors, known as the red shirts, have been making similar 'blood sacrifices' all week, collecting and spilling their blood outside Government House and the headquarters of Mr Abhisit's Democrat party.
They hope the protests, which began with about 100,000 people marching in Bangkok on Sunday, will put pressure on Mr Abhisit to resign, dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Despite the grim nature of the protests, demonstrations have so far been largely peaceful, although the number of activists has now shrunk to around 10,000.
Mr Vejjajiva, based at an army barracks on the northern outskirts of Bangkok for the past week, has so far resisted demands to step down.
The protestors, officially known as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, are largely made up of supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Thaksin was ousted in 2006 in a bloodless coup but his supporters, drawn largely from Thailand's poorer, rural northern and southern provinces, claim the current administration assumed power illegally.
In late 2008 a mass protest by anti-Thaksin yellow shirt protestors saw Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport taken over, with thousands of tourists stranded as a result.
And last April in the last major protest by the red shirt movement, at least two people were killed and 120 injured as security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets.
In the 64 years of current king Bhumibol Adulyadej's reign in Thailand there have been 18 successful or attempted coups.