Thai police fired tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators and made dozens of arrests yesterday as thousands demanded the overthrow of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in the biggest street protest yet against her 16-month-old government.
Protesters from the royalist Pitak Siam group, led by retired military general Boonlert Kaewprasit, repeatedly tried to breach police lines in the Thai capital and rammed a six-wheel truck into a security barrier but were held back.
They accused Yingluck’s government of corruption, being a puppet of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother, and of disloyalty to Thailand’s monarchy. Many were members of a yellow-shirt protest movement that helped trigger a coup by royalist generals in 2006 that toppled Thaksin.
The clashes revived memories of a tumultuous 2008, when yellow-shirted protesters seized government offices, fought street battles with police, and occupied Bangkok’s main airports for eight days. Amid that turbulence, two pro-Thaksin prime ministers were forced to resign by the courts.
Yingluck won a 2011 election by a landslide on support from the rural and urban poor. Her supporters, who wear red shirts at protests, held mass street rallies in 2010 against a military-backed Democrat-led government. Those demonstrations ended with a bloody army crackdown in which 91 people were killed.