Three Days in a Riot Zone

I spent three days in a riot zone. We live at the Sam Liam Din Daeng Intersection. Here is what I wrote on the third day:

I am here with my 11-year-old son, Thun. The other half of our family, Poo and Jason, left for the countryside on Thursday morning, purely by chance. Thun has been very good-natured about it, but it disturbs me that he is being exposed to this.

Our neighborhood is Sam Liam Din Daeng. This neighborhood is pretty sympathetic to the Reds and we certainly gave them a warm welcome six weeks ago. when they arrived peacefully from the Northeast. We are between the main highway from the North, Vibhavadi, and the transportation hub of Bangkok, Victory Monument, so it is a vital location. We are about 2 km from Rajprarop Intersection, where the Red Shirts have centered their rallies. The demonstration has been going on for 6 weeks, and it has been an inconvenience for us – but that was all it was, an inconvenience, until Thursday night, when Seh Daeng was shot and Bangkok exploded into violence.

On Friday, the government moved troops into the area between us and Rajprarop, and the red shirts reacted immediately. From all directions, motorcycles adorned with red paraphernalia descended upon our neighborhood, just behind the troops. They captured a government truck with about a half dozen soldiers, who surrendered immediately. They shot one of the soldiers and then kindly hurried him into an ambulance. Then they deflated the tires on the military truck, siphoned out its diesel, and set it on fire at the intersection.

We heard shooting and explosions until about 03:00 on Friday night/Saturday morning. On Saturday morning, about 07:00, I went out to look at the intersection while Thun was still sleeping. I quickly turned around and went home because what I saw was not pretty. Angry young men, led by mototaxi drivers in their orange vests, were assembling old tires and diesel – this stuff was coming in on pickup trucks. At the intersection they started a fire which has been burning ever since – billowing huge clouds of black smoke into Bangkok's already polluted air.

I went back a little later with Thun to get some food and to go to the ATM. There was a crowd of people around a man on the ground – apparently he had been shot. Another man was screaming his head off: “THE ARMY WON'T LET AN AMBULANCE IN!” That may have been true, but I simply needed to look left and right to see burning tires and debris. Sensibly, Thun tugged me by the arm and led me back to the safety of the apartment.

I cannot condone the escalation by the government – it seems the government has taken a bad situation and made it worse, much worse. But let me clear about this: it is the protesters who are terrorizing this neighborhood – blocking streets, starting fires, seizing cars and trucks, firing homemade rockets at the soldiers, and provoking them with slingshots and Molotov cocktails.

For about an hour yesterday afternoon, the soldiers responded intensely. There was a continuous volley of gunfire from about 4:15 to 5:15. The photographs of protesters shot in the head are grisly, but if only seven people died in Bangkok yesterday (as the government claims) then most of the firing must have been into the air, because I heard hundreds of rounds go off. The army was announcing by loudspeaker: “get out of the street or you might be shot.”

Last night, I went out into the street again. Now the soldiers had retreated and hundreds of protesters, many of them women, were just sitting in the 8-lane street: Thanon Din Daeng. Protesters were taking aim at the streetlights with their slingshots – they had knocked out about 7 and had about 5 to go. Each time one was knocked out there was a little cheer congratulating some fool, who will probably die tomorrow, for his good aim. It was getting strangely dark – the kind of darkness you never get in Bangkok.

Fortunately, our little mini-soi, about 80 meters back from the street, seems to be safe. There are buildings all around so we are protected from stray bullets. Still, it's eerie to hear the crack of gunfire throughout the day and to see that billowing black smoke day and night. People have urged us to get out – but Thun and I feel safe here and we don't want to venture into that road system which is rife with conflict, gunfire, burning vehicles and explosions.