THAI MILITARY COUP DAY 3 12.35AM Time to retire for the night. For those thinking this is just **another Thai coup** and that everything will return to normal soon, well I am not so sure. This time it feels more serious with higher stakes and more intent. I am sure there are things happening here and driving this that remain unseen and misunderstood. 12.30AM German journalist Florian Witulsk has tweeted that the Army is compiling a list of foreign media organisations that it will ban from reporting in Thailand. He also says that CAT Telecom is preventing foreign media from booking satellite uplinks. 9.30PM With 30 minutes to go until the curfew kicks in there have been many developments tonight: * General Prayuth has dissolved the Senate, the last remaining representative institution (there have been suggestions that some of the pro-Thaksin senators were caucusing with him in his foreign location). He has also fired the civilian head of the defence department, the head of the police and the head of the special investigations department that investigates organised crime and corruption. This concentrates power in his office. * Thaksins only son Panthongtae has been detained and is being taken from Chiang Mai to Bangkok by helicopter (this has been denied by his sister on social media) * There have been 15 explosions in the south of Thailand in Pattani and Narathiwat targeting amongst other places, 7-11 stores. Two of the targets, though, appear to have been a navy boat and an army depot. At first glance, this would appear to be connected to a long running Muslim insurrection there but the timing and choice of military targets is curious. Currently 3 dead and 52 injured. * 5 arrested in Chiang Mai for protesting against the coup * The earlier protest at Victory Monument has ended * Various economic experts have been summoned to provide advice on the economy to the new military government. * Editors of 18 newspapers summoned to speak with the military government tomorrow. * The palace has acknowledged that it received a letter from General Prayuth regarding the coup but no word on an audience or assent yet 4.45PM: Soldiers are negotiating with Skytrain officials to close down the entrances and exits to the Victory Monument Station where protestors are traveling to demonstrate against the coup. Police have already locked down some of the road entrances. One report suggests the crowd of protestors there is swelling. Victory Monument has two train lines entering it, is a transport hub and is fed by four major roads. Very difficult to lock down. 4.30PM: Police have blocked the protestors from entering the Victory area. So the protestors have caught the skytrain in instead. Police/army reinforcements converging on the area in trucks. 4PM: The anti-coup protests have now moved to Victory Monument. Tweeted photos from the spot suggest the protest nos have grown as has the police/army presence. Looks much more tense than before. 1.45PM: The army and police are allowing the Lad Yao protest to continue, while keeping watch from a distance. Probably a sensible strategy, there are only 150 of them and allowing them to dissent at a limited level plays better to the gallery than some form of disproportionate crackdown. 11.35AM: There is another anti-coup protest taking place at the Major Ratchayothin shopping/cinema complex in Lad Yao presently. They have been surrounded by a riot squad with shields who currently are asking them, unsuccessfully, to disperse. I am assuming this protest was organised via social media such as Line, Facebook and Twitter. Wouldnt surprise me to see some form of censorship or blockage of these media soon, especially Line which has previously been very co-operative with Thai law enforcement. (Facebook tends to be the least co-operative and thus the most likely to be completely blocked) 11.30AM: More added to the list who must report to the Army, this time mainly academics and retired police officers seen as proThaksin. Now nearly 200 in total detained and only a few (mainly Democrat politicians) allowed home. The objective appears to be to deny opportunities to those seen as potential organising forces for the deposed government and their supporters (as well as their protestor opponents such as Suthep) - they are detained and denied access to mobile phones. This is designed to suppress the organisation of any anti-coup activities. With Thaksin spokesman Robert Amsterdam hinting that the deposed government may form a government in exile, I would say the probability of a long detention/house arrest and complete travel ban on these people is high. 11AM: Seems that the military government has allowed multichannel providers such as True to restore broadcast of foreign channels. But the True feed I get where I live seems to still be blocking the two American news channels CNN and CNBC. People are reporting different things here because individual condo and apartment blocks dont always take their feed from one source: they might take say NHK World, BBC and Australia Network direct from satellite and CNN, CNBC and so on from a Thai rebroadcaster such as True. But for the average Thai, normal TV service has been basically restored, albeit subject to the constraints of censorship
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 04:04:47 +0000
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