Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Discord in Thai kingdom
Punchai is arranging strings of flowers under the imposing statue of King Rama VI at the entrance of Lumphini Park in Bangkok. The statue overlooks one end of the sprawling “red shirt” encampment that occupies a 3 square-km area of downtown Bangkok.
An altar has been set up at the base of the statue of a king who ruled from 1910 to 1925 and is generally credited with paving the way for democractic reforms in the kingdom. He is also the creator of Lumphini Park.
(Pro-government supporter raises a picture of Thai King bhumibol Adulyadej at a rally in Bangkok on April 27. Reuters/Jerry Lampen)
“We put beautiful flowers here for the king, and the people,” says Punchai, a bicycle rickshaw driver in Bangkok.
It’s sundown and it’s fairly relaxed for a place where guys generally roam about with sharpened bamboo spears and which has a medieval-like barricades made of tyres and bamboo poles.
Children run about in the grass near the statue playing with spears. Women stir curries simmering in big cooking pots for the evening meals. Yesterday, it was tense here. The men stood in rows in front of the barricade, wearing helmets. Women and children were not be seen. Monks wandered amongst the men receiving “merit” from them, bits of food or spare change that can mean a more accommodating place in the afterlife should death suddenly intervene.
Police and army troops are stationed all around the encampment, mostly hunkered down in alleyways or in underground walkways, away from the heat and public eye. Bangkok has been expecting a crackdown on this sit-in for days. And it hasn’t happened. Not likely to, either. Despite bombastic threats and rhetoric from the civilian government, the army has said repeatedly it won’t go in because it would be just too bloody.
from Russell Boyce:
The promise of seven blood baths in Bangkok and no violence
With the same ghoulish intrigue that children pull the wings off a fly, the legs off spiders or as motorists slow to look at a scene of a bad accident, I waited to see the pictures from last night's demonstration in Thailand. The "red shirt" wearing supporters of ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra promised the world the sight of a million cubic centimetres of blood being drawn from the arms of his supporters and then thrown over Government House to demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva call an immediate election. A million is a bold figure that I tried to picture; a thousand cubic centimetres, one litre, so one thousand litre cartons of milk. A more compact notion of the volume would be to visualise a cubic metre of blood; or in more practical terms in the UK the average bath size is 140 litres, so that is just over seven baths filled with blood.
A supporter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra donates blood during a gathering in Bangkok March 16, 2010. Anti-government protesters will collect one million cubic centimetres of blood to pour outside the Government House in Bangkok, in a symbolic move to denounce the government as part of their demonstration to call for fresh elections. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang
The pictures are amazing. The frenzy of the demonstrators carrying plastic containers full of human blood. The lines of riot police (what was going through their minds?) facing the crowd. And then suddenly the emotional release as the blood is actually poured at the gates of Government House, leaving a growing crimson pool of human blood spreading towards the feet of the police and towards the buildings of government.
Riot soldiers and policemen stand guard as supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra rally outside the Government house in Bangkok March 16, 2010. Thousands of protesters in Thailand donated blood and poured it later outside the premier's office on Tuesday, a "sacrifice for democracy" aimed at energising their movement after the government refused to step down. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom
I think this an informative and interesting article. I think it is very useful and knowledgeable, happy to see some people still have interest in this.
Balancing powers in the Malacca Strait
Singapore’s warning of a terrorist threat in the Malacca Straits has again highighted the issue of who is in charge of security in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have stepped up sea patrols in the strait after Singapore’s navy said on Thursday it had received indications a terrorist group was planning attacks on oil tankers.
A Police Coast Guard vessel patrols shipping lanes near freight ships off the coast of Singapore March 4, 2010. ( REUTERS/Vivek Prakash)
The 900-km long (550 miles) Malacca Strait, linking Europe and the Middle East with the Asia-Pacific, carries about 40 percent of the world’s trade. More than 50,000 merchant ships ply the waterway every year.
About 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Middle East crude passed through the strait and to Japan last year. Middle East crude accounts for 90 percent of Japan’s total imports. Up to 80 percent of China’s crude imports are delivered via the narrow and congested waterway.
So China and Japan have a stake in keeping the Malacca Strait secure, as does India which has a blue water navy patrolling in the Andaman Sea at the western end of the strait.
The strait is a vital sea lane for the U.S. Navy, which sent warships to Taiwan via the Malacca Strait at a time of heightened tensions between China and Taiwan in 1996.
Don’t believe what you see!