Riot in Bangkok

The situation described in this article is rapidly developing into a riot on live television. It looks like the anti-coup protesters have erected some sort of bastion in the street in front of the Privy Council President’s house and the police may have used tear gas.
The riot police, I must say, are really disorganized and poorly trained. You can tell by their loose formations when advancing that they are not very good at controlling a crowd that is turning increasingly violent. The crowd was originally throwing what appeared to be empty plastic bottles, but have now turned to throwing rocks and other debris they find on the street. There are some frantic women in the crowd pleading the angry young men to calm down, but they are caught up in the heat of the moment.
Some of the camera crews are staked out on buildings opposite the house and have a good view of the situation only partially blocked by tree branches. From their perspective we just saw one of the protesters parading around with a plexiglass riot shield. Another camera crew on the street, about fifteen minutes later, possibly caught the policeman who lost his shield on the front lines brandishing a heavy plastic chair. At first, he was using it to block things being thrown at him, then he swung it down with great force in someone’s face.
Things do not seem to be calming down at the moment, I will keep watching and perhaps update later.

2 thoughts on “Riot in Bangkok

Leave a Reply to Justin Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.