Thai political protests turn violent, one dead
Bangkok (AFP) - Mass opposition protests aimed at overthrowing Thailand's embattled prime minister turned violent on Saturday with one person shot dead and 21 wounded as the government called on the army to protect key state buildings.
The demonstrators, who want to replace Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's government with an unelected "people's council", have mounted the kingdom's biggest street rallies since political violence in Bangkok three years ago left dozens dead in a military crackdown.
The protests were triggered by an amnesty bill, since abandoned by the ruling party, that opponents feared would have allowed the return of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother, whose overthrow by royalist generals in 2006 unleashed years of political turmoil.
Thaksin is adored by many of the country's rural and urban working class for his populist policies while in power, but hated by many southerners, middle-class Thais and the Bangkok elite, who see him as corrupt and a threat to the monarchy.
As tensions soared in the capital, opposition demonstrators attacked a bus carrying "Red Shirt" government supporters heading to their own rally at a sports stadium in Bangkok, throwing stones and other objects, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
Protesters also hurled bottles at police near the venue in the Ramkhamhaeng district, where more than 70,000 Red Shirts were gathered. The capital's main tourist areas were unaffected by the violence.
Gunshots were later fired near the stadium, claiming the first life in the recent protests, according to police, although the circumstances were unclear.
"A 21-year-man was shot dead by two bullets to his left side," said Boonchuay Pochantong, an official at a nearby police station in the capital.
Twenty-one other people suffered a range of wounds including from gunshots and stabbings, according to an official at the city's Erawan emergency centre.
But by midnight the situation appeared to be calm with Red Shirt leaders calling on their followers to stay in the rally stadium overnight to avoid fresh confrontation.
While the protesters' numbers have fallen sharply since an estimated crowd of up to 180,000 people joined an opposition rally on November 24, they have increasingly sought out high profile targets in what experts believe could be an attempt to provoke a military coup.
Demonstrators used piles of sandbags Saturday to try to climb over barriers protecting Yingluck's offices at the Government House, but were prevented by police from entering. Yingluck was not believed to be present at the time.
Government calls on army
With the situation deteriorating, authorities announced more than 2,700 troops would be mobilised to reinforce security in Bangkok, the first time a significant number of soldiers have been deployed to cope with the unrest.
Protesters have stormed a number of government buildings in the capital over the past week, meeting little or no resistance from police.
"We have information that there will be efforts to escalate violence in several areas," said National Police spokesman Piya Utayo.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban said demonstrators would try again on Sunday to take control of Yingluck's offices.
"Tomorrow our group will enter the area of Government House," he said in a speech to supporters.
Organisers of the anti-government demo have urged people to turn out in strength this weekend in a final push before celebrations for revered c's birthday on December 5, which is traditionally marked in an atmosphere of calm and respect.
Yingluck said security officials were "ready to defend" Government House, but added that they would do so with "leniency".
"I want to ask protesters not to confront each other in a way that may lead to violence," she said.
Hundreds of opposition protesters also massed at two major state-owned telecoms firms, cutting the power supplies in a move that caused widespread disruption to Internet services in the country.
"I feel tomorrow we will win," protester Sanit Ounjai, a 45-year-old rubber farmer from southern Thailand, told AFP.
The protesters' arch enemy Thaksin lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a jail term for a corruption conviction that he contends is politically motivated, but is widely believed to be the real power behind the ruling party.
Pro-Thaksin parties have won every election for more than a decade but Yingluck has given no indication that she is thinking of calling fresh polls as a way out of the crisis.
Yingluck's Puea Thai party came to power in 2011 elections on a wave of Thaksin support, after a bloody 2010 military crackdown on Red Shirt protests under the previous government left some 90 people dead.
