I GOT the call from a journalist friend in a TV network, at 6am on Wednesday.
Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and hundreds of troops were approaching the sprawling three square kilometre site from Sala Daeng, filled with protesters since April 3 demanding an immediate election, an end to 'double standards' and the domination of Thailand by its old aristocratic elites. The government has called a radical armed element among them 'terrorists' and said the red shirts have a clandestine agenda to overthrow the monarchy.
I looked out of my 24th floor window and saw troops below.
Going out on to the streets I saw that army units boxing in the protest site elsewhere had also been reinforced. There was very clearly a mounting tension. Meanwhile, a 6-day clash up Rama IV road in the Bon Kai neighbourhood, continued unabated. But the target of the morning’s operation was the Ratchaprasong intersection.
Working with another journalist friend, I got to Rajadamri on a motorcycle after walking through the first red shirt barricade. It must have been just minutes before 7am.
We got through to Rajadamri, close to the Sala Daeng end of the protest. Red shirts were gathered in large numbers a couple of hundred metres back from the barricade on Rajadamri road, prowling around with sticks and rods and slingshots and fireworks. Some lit and floated the large white Thai lanterns that are such a charming sight in better times as they float slowly upwards; this time, they were flying them into the sky to put off helicopters – a futile gesture really.
Up to 5,000 scared Red Shirts were evacuated at around 9am
this morning from a temple where they had taken refuge.
Inside the temple, six bodies were found.
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
Some outlying barricades in the area had been torched already, the dense black smoke from burning bamboo and tyres rolling across the city centre. Red shirts scanned high buildings with binoculars looking for snipers.
Soldiers began the assault by firing over and through the barricades into the protest zone. Red shirts responded with slingshots firing ball bearings and 'ping pong ball bombs' and some gunfire from handguns and a few assault rifles. At one point later in the morning, red shirt paramilitary guards and possibly the mysterious ‘’men in black’’ fighters who have been supporting the reds, fired M79 grenades at troops.
Explosions thudded and the whiplash-like crack of M16 assault rifles echoed through leafy Lumpini Park, which had been contested between the army and the reds since they occupied Ratchaprasong on April 3. At 9am the first red shirt casualty was brought from the frontline in an ambulance, with a leg wound. The ambulance raced through the protesters who cleared a path for it. The mood was one of high anxiety and mounting panic and chaos. Within about 20 minutes at least three more were brought back, and photographs emerged of one protester lying dead with a shot to the head.
Today as I review the pictures that have appeared on the clashes, I see terrible injuries on both sides. Shrapnel tore through flesh and helmets and heads as the close-combat battle reduced central Bangkok once again to a war zone. The morning’s clashes also claimed the life of an Italian photographer who was shot in the midst of the fighting. Several other journalists were also injured.
Six Red Shirt supporters killed in the fighting on Wednesday - murky circumstances
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
After retreating we went back to the Maneeya Centre building and the Asiaworks office, where several TV teams were working out of. Al Jazeera had live footage from Sala Daeng, and we saw at around 10am, four APCs accompanied by hundreds of troops, bursting through the enormous barricade there, the troops running behind them.
We went back to Rajadamri where there was panic as the army occupied adjacent Lumpini Park. At one point even some 200 metres from the frontline, stray bullets hit the trees above us and we ducked and retreated.
We then worked our way in a big loop across the city avoiding closed roads, around to Sala Daeng. Silom road was empty and the atmosphere edgy. At Sala Daeng the army refused to allow journalists into Lumpini, saying it was too dangerous. Occasional gunfire could still be heard at around 11:30am.
At around 2pm shortly after several UDD leaders announced an end to the rally in order to save lives, and gave themselves up to police, there were sporadic gun battles close to the Ratchaprasong area. Two trucks were torched below the Chidlom BTS station, burning furiously and leaving the underside of the concrete structure blackened with soot.
The Central World mall - expression of rage
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
Almost all red shirt protesters then melted away from the site. But the mood turned ugly, with hoodlums torching buildings and at the site of another clash in Din Daeng, apparently turning against journalists. Trying to edge my way to Ratchaprasong, I found myself on Wireless road unable to move much in any direction because of the fighting.
For an hour and a half I and a few other journalists sat with the troops around us waiting quietly and watchfully. Two lay prone on the stairs of the pedestrian overpass, and more sneaked quietly forward on the Skytrain tracks overhead, covering the road leading down to Ratchaprasong. The red shirt barricade right there on that crossing, was still up and intact, and the troops had been told there was a bomb in it.
Finally a big crane arrived and began picking and tearing the barricade apart. A bomb squad also arrived and began preparing its gear. Suddenly a firebomb of some sort went off in the midst of the dense thicket of sharpened bamboo staves and car tyres, all festooned with rags soaked in diesel. Huge flames and oily black smoke rose and everyone stepped back as the bamboo crackled and popped, but an army water cannon truck arrived and the fire was quickly brought under control.
Meanwhile up the road about two kilometers away red shirts had set fire to tyres at the Asoke intersection and were attacking the offices of Channel 3 television.
At our location, clean-up crews with bulldozers swung into action, and after a while the soldiers made their way over the sticky smouldering debris on full alert, wary of being ambushed by snipers or UDD fighters. They advanced carefully, at a crouch, hugging the edges of the road and taking cover behind tree trunks and staircases and pillars as they worked their way up to the Ratchaprasong intersection and the famed Erawan shrine.
Remains of the rally
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
We followed cautiously, and found the abandoned paraphernalia of the rally: supplies, kitchen equipment, tents and awnings, chairs, fans and sleeping mats. As the troops picked through the abandoned paraphernalia which included motorbikes and cars, they found a couple of boxes of petrol bombs.
They apprehended three protesters, two of whom seemed to be in a daze and very scared. One could hardly walk. Only one young man seemed defiant but offered no resistance. They were all led away by the troops, who were from a division based in Kanchanaburi province. A commanding officer assured journalists they would not be mistreated.
Halfway to Ratchaprasong, we realized that these were the first soldiers to reach the site. It was a strange scene. At the main rally site the stage remained untouched, with its sound system and drum set and microphones. In front in an area which over the last month and half has been packed 24 hours a day with at times up to 20,000 people singing and dancing and roaring for the government to call an election, was littered with bags, umbrellas, CDs and other personal effects of the protesters.
Early stages of the fire at the Central World mall.
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
As smoke drifted across the scene from the giant Central World mall which has been set on fire by hoodlums as they dispersed, only one red shirt remained among the shambles of the demonstration, standing defiantly dressed in red, proudly holding a red flag and sullenly refusing to budge when the soldiers approached her.
She eyed us warily as we approached. It turned out she was a former nurse. Her name was Pusadee Ngamkham, and she was 55 years old, she said.
The soldiers, clearly struck by her courage, spoke to her politely.
'I made a promise not to leave before the prime minister dissolved the House, and I will not leave,' she said.
Lone defiance from a former nurse who refused to leave
ST Photo: Nirmal Ghosh
The Day After
Thursday, 1pm : The rest of Bangkok may be limping back to something almost normal – except for the night curfews that have been extended until Saturday, and the state of shock many residents are in as they try to comprehend what happened on Wednesday. But the state of affairs at the epicenter at Ratchaprasong, will remain engraved in the memory of many for years to come, and have a deep bearing on the future of Thailand.