======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================


http://www.smh.com.au/world/blood-flows-as-army-tightens-its-grip-20100516-v6eh.html

<http://www.smh.com.au/world/blood-flows-as-army-tightens-its-grip-20100516-v6eh.html>Blood
flows as army tightens its grip

*
*

*The battle is fought street by street, casualty by casualty, writes Ben
Doherty in Bangkok.*


The driver of the motorcycle weaves at speed between the rocks and broken
glass, the rubbish and the burning tyres that are the detritus of this
street warfare, up Wireless Road towards Bumrungrad Hospital. On the back,
another man holds the shot man's head. Between clotted clumps of hair, blood
gushes, running down their bodies.

The unconscious man's limp bleeding bare foot drags along the road, leaving
a crimson trail.

Gunfire had been constant most of the afternoon at the site in the fortified
Red Shirt zone of the city, near the US and British embassies. But the guns
had quietened for several minutes. Perhaps emboldened by the respite, the
man had run forward to a new position.Moments earlier the man had been
crouched behind a wall of tyres, slowly building a barricade, designed to
slow, if never really stop, the progress of government troops stationed a
few hundred metres away.

Instantly, a single crack rang out, felling him. Two men ran, hunched over,
to drag him back to a side street and the motorcycle. The soldiers allowed
them to leave the zone with their critically injured friend, but they will
not be allowed back.

This is how the battle for Bangkok will be fought over coming days. Street
by street, inch by inch, casualty by casualty.

Scenes like this are being played out across the centre of the city, as
troops slowly squeeze in on the fortified camp that has been held by
anti-government Red Shirt protesters for weeks.

The Red Shirts have not yet lost any territory to the army, but the
government says it is prepared to wait them out, starving them of food,
water, power and contact with the outside world.

The Red Shirts are determined to fight back.

After two days of porous roadblocks which allowed supplies and extra Red
Shirts supporters in, the army has put up barricades and strung razor wire
across all roads leading to the protest camp. There are few ways in now.

Already there are reports the Red Shirts are running short of food and of
fuel. Scrambled mobile phone signals are making communications difficult,
and the weariness of constant fighting is taking its toll.

Despite the suffering, or perhaps because of it, the leaders on both sides
remain resolute.

The Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has appeared on every Thai TV channel
promising to ''push forward'' with his plan to have the army forcibly remove
the protesters, while Red Shirt leaders have vowed to fight to the end.

But on the streets, there is fear. Fear is in the eyes of the Red Shirts'
guards standing defiantly, but nervously, at the fortified entrance to the
camp.

Full of bravado, Annan demonstrates his slingshot, pulling the rubber back
and forth, aimed at a sniper, real or imaginary, in a nearby building. At
his feet is a pile of rocks and lumps of concrete to hurl at oncoming
troops. In his back pocket is a homemade rocket launcher fashioned from
bamboo and scrap metal, to shoot fireworks at soldiers and police
helicopters. They are a feeble riposte to the rifles and M-16s of the
soldiers crouched behind sandbags and razor wire a few hundred metres away.

The barricade behind which Annan stands, built up over weeks of protest, is
a enormous wall of tyres and sharpened bamboo staves, four metres high. It
reeks of petrol. Expecting troops to march on them any day, the Red Shirts
have filled their barricades with fuel, ready to burn their city down before
they give it up.

''We are getting killed. We are all scared to get killed, but we stay.''

But fear is written, too, on the faces of the troops on Rama IV Road, at the
southern end of the Red Shirts' zone. Over loudspeakers, they plead with
protesters for peace. ''We are the people's army. We are just doing our duty
for the nation. Brothers and sisters, let's talk together.'' There is little
hope of that.

In the late afternoon on Ratchaprarop Road in Din Daeng, in the north of the
city, doing their duty includes firing live ammunition at anyone they see on
the street.

The army has designated it a ''live-fire zone'' because it is an entry point
to the city for Red Shirt supporters from the north-eastern provinces. Four
soldiers huddle behind a telephone box, signalling anxiously to colleagues
further back up the road. As a petrol bomb lands with a ''whump'' in the
middle of the road, three of them scurry back to the safety of a street
corner while one remains to provide covering fire. He quickly retreats too,
after firing a half a dozen rounds towards the mass of protesters.

Soon it is dark. Nightfall comes quickly in this part of the world, making
the city, scarcely possible though it is, even more menacing. The no man's
land between the Red Shirts' fortifications and the soldiers' lines is
completely blacked out, and eerily empty.

Leaving the Red Shirts' area for relative safety outside the conflict zone,
a small knot of protesters crouch in darkness on the corner of Ploenchit and
Wireless roads.

One tells the *Herald*: ''No light. Sniper, sniper. Up high. Shoot.'' We are
forced to ride a motorbike, creeping along the edge of empty streets,
holding a helmet over the headlamp to black it out of view of those soldiers
in the buildings surrounding.

These streets, which house some of the most exclusive addresses in Bangkok,
usually teem with activity 24 hours a day. Tonight, they are strewn with
rotting garbage, but deserted of people. The only noise is distant gunfire
and explosions, all too regular, coming from other parts of the city.

Half an empty kilometre ahead are the lights of the army roadblock and the
rest of the city beyond.

Thousands of Thais spend hours just outside the conflict zone, unable to see
much beyond the smoke and the barricades, and unable to hear anything except
for the volleys of gunfire. From a distance, they watch their city descend
into war.

As the *Herald* passes, one woman yells hysterically at the impassive
soldiers manning the roadblock: ''They are killing us, they are killing us.
We are Thais too. Why do they kill us?''
-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original
virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through
disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under
Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Reply via email to