Thailand protests: Bangkok police HQ targeted after lawmakers reject charter amendments

Thousands of anti-government protesters marched on Thailand’s police headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday, defacing the compound walls with brightly coloured paint, after a parliamentary motion to amend the bitterly divisive constitution in accordance with their demands was rejected by a majority of lawmakers.

The rally came a day after the broadly peaceful movement – which is calling for reform of the government and monarchy – lurched into its worst day of violence as protesters were involved in rolling clashes with police and royalist hardliners outside Parliament House.

Explainer | Why are there protests in Thailand and what will happen next?

“I’m here to send my moral support to the kids,” said Chan, 60, who asked to be identified only by her surname. “I’m very sad to see what happened last night, it was too cruel.”

On Wednesday, at least 20,000 protesters – some of whom were dressed in school uniforms, their ranks later swelled by office workers – massed at Ratchaprasong intersection in downtown Bangkok.

After daubing anti-royal slogans on walls and the road, they marched on the heavily-defended national police headquarters – led by a clown and a parade of giant inflatable rubber ducks. They were accompanied by a Buddhist monk giving the three-fingered salute borrowed from the Hunger Games movies that has become emblematic of the youth-led protest movement.

Some protesters threw glass bottles and paint bombs over the walls of police HQ, which was barricaded with dumper trucks, concrete blocks and razor wire. Others hurled paint at the outside walls, leaving them plastered with bright yellows and blues, while others used water pistols to squirt paint into the compound.

A majority of parliamentarians, including those in the military-appointed Senate, had earlier rejected the draft charter amendments proposed by civil group Internet Law Reform Dialogue, or iLaw, which claimed to have received support of almost 100,000 people before it was submitted.

After two days of discussion, lawmakers accepted only two of seven constitutional amendment drafts for deliberation. Both drafts leave the first two chapters of the constitution concerning the power and role of the monarch untouched.

Prominent protest leader Jatupat Boonpattarasaksa called a new rally on November 25 outside the Crown Property Bureau, which manages the hugely wealthy monarchy’s estates.

On Tuesday, the authorities deployed tear gas and water cannons. They were also involved in a late-night melee with “yellow shirt” royalists who had massed inside a police cordon, with both sides throwing bricks and bottles.

At least 55 people were taken to hospital, including six who were shot metres from the parliament building, according to police and emergency workers, although it was unclear who fired and whether live rounds or rubber bullets were used.

The shootings, in a city where firearms are commonplace, mark a potentially dangerous turning point for the protests. Thailand has a history of bloody street clashes between pro-democracy activists and supporters of the conservative elite.

“Yesterday we saw that the two sides were treated differently by the authorities: the ultra-royalists were treated with a welcoming manner, meanwhile the pro-democracy demonstrators were met with hostility,” said Pandit Chanrochanakit, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University. “That says something, something is going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about.

“The pro-democracy movement’s strong weapon is their peaceful approach,” he said. “But once they turn to violence, the government is more than ready to use their legitimacy to handle it.”

Tensions between the rival camps soared after Tuesday night’s clashes, with blame for starting the violence being traded over social media.

No evidence Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn broke laws while living in Germany, reports say

“It was one-on-one fighting between the black shirts [protesters] and the yellow shirts,” said a 22-year-old royalist, who asked to be referred to as Tiger, outside a hospital where he was treated for tear-gas inhalation. “People were grabbing whatever they could to use as weapons– wood, sticks or police shields.”

Nursing an injury, Boss, a 25-year-old who volunteered to act as a guard for the pro-democracy side, said the movement remained defiant. “I may have a broken wrist but my beliefs aren’t broken yet,” he said.

Thailand, a country which has seen 13 coups since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, is in the grip of another round of political crisis. The protesters want the military-backed government of Prime Minister Prayuth to stand down, and the passing of a new constitution to remove the army from politics.

Crucially, they are also pressing for reform of the once-untouchable monarchy. This has enraged royalist conservatives, who have been emboldened by a sudden flurry of soft public appearances by King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

The king has rubbed shoulders with supporters and made unprecedented off-the-cuff comments to foreign media, including an insistence that Thailand is “the land of compromise” when asked for a message to the protesters who want his powers tethered to the constitution.

The youth-dominated democracy movement has also taken to social media to criticise Vajiralongkorn’s largesse with taxpayers’ money as well as his support of the army.

Thailand ‘Letter to King’ protest seeks royal support for purge of military from politics

Twitter users shared the hashtag “duckmocracy” on Wednesday, a reference to the rubber inflatables protesters used to defend themselves from water cannons.

Meanwhile, the so-called Milk Tea Alliance of democracy activists from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand have once more thrown their backing behind the movement in Bangkok. “Clearly it’s a lie when the king claimed ‘we love them all the same’,” Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong tweeted after the ugly scenes on Tuesday.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Kyodo