From the perspective of an ambulance rallying point at Phrapinklao Bridge in Bangkok, it appears that the police got the worst of this evening's confrontation with Red Shirt protesters. I saw approximately 60 people loaded into ambulance boats to be ferried to hospitals, and the injured police outnumbered civilians about 2:1. A few of the injuries appeared quite significant. Earlier in the evening, crowds on the bridge had unguarded access to several military vehicles on the bridge and vandalized them. One American couple I talked to said they saw protesters near Khao San Road throwing "molotov cocktails" and firing guns at the police.
First, these caveats: I don't speak the language, I don't know the ground, I talked to almost no one, and I tried to honor the spirit of my promise to my family to stay clear of the protests by keeping some distance when the action came to me. My understanding of what I saw is necessarily very limited, and the broader pictured painted by the professional media is already different from what I observed in one spot.
I didn't get close enough to get very good pix in the dark. I have some video but won't be able to upload it until I'm at a better computer set up.
At about 5 p.m. Saturday, I walked out on to Phrapinklao Bridge to see if I could observe the protests in the distance down Phrapinklao Road, which was closed to four-wheel traffic. (Motorbikes and tuk-tuks seem to be able to go into barricaded streets.) About that time, some protesters were beginning to cross on foot toward the rallies. About 6 military vehicles -- buses, jeeps and trucks -- were left unattended on the bridge, apparently by police or soldiers who had walked into the city earlier. Navy boats, some with cannons, were patrolling below the bridge, and a military helicopter flying over the protest area occasionally came near. The pedestrian traffic began to accumulate to jeer the boats and helicopter and then began to vandalize the vehicles parked there -- tires flattened, wires ripped out from under the hood and water poured into the oil reservoir. Children were playing in the driver's seats of the buses. Later in the evening I saw one of the buses on fire.
At about 7 p.m., ambulances, usually a pickup truck with about 4 medics riding in back, began rallying in the street underneath the bridge, heading toward the protest sites and returning with the injured to carry them to ambulance boats waiting at the pier underneath the bridge. About 5 boats were queued up in the water at a given time.
Police or soldiers in riot gear were the significant majority of who I saw brought in. Many limped to the pier under their own steam, their injuries not apparent, presumably affected by tear gas. All the police I saw had riot gear -- usually still wearing shin guards and shoulder guards. I saw two elderly men short of breath, which I also assumed was from tear gas. Many other injured were carried on stretchers. Some were quite bloodied up. I saw one civilian being given chest compressions. Two civilians were laid down on the cement to be bandaged instead of being taken directly to the boats, and their hair was soaked in blood. One police or soldier apparently had a broken leg that needed to be splinted before he was moved.
For about one hour, I counted about one arrival every 3-4 minutes. Beginning about 8 p.m. and for about 30 minutes, the arrivals started to pour in more frequently. There were usually more than 2 ambulances on the scene at a time, and it was quite chaotic getting the injured to the boats. Sometimes, a tuk-tuk or hired motorbike would arrive with passengers who were apparently asking after the wounded and then running down to the pier. About 8:30, the ambulances on the scene began to leave without unloading their injured and other ambulances raced by without stopping, presumably to another rally point or hospital.
It began to quiet down under Phrapinklao Bridge at that point. In places the pavement was stained with blood and littered with rubber gloves and bandages. Piles of shields, batons and other riot gear were left behind.
As of 10:30 I can still hear an occasional siren on Phra Athit Road.
I never heard any explosions or gunfire from where I was.
I also saw signs of violence earlier in the day. In a taxi on the way to Phra Athit Road ffrom the northern part of the city at about 3 p.m., the taxi got stuck in a traffic jam near the western end of Si Ayuthaya Road, which was blocked to four-wheel traffic. As I walked a few blocks south through the jam, I couldn't see the protests in the distance. An ambulance became stuck in the traffic near there, and while it was stuck, a motorbike driver came up Si Ayuthaya with a passenger holding a bloody bandage to his head. When a medic jumped out of the ambulance to help him in, I could see that his shirt was already bloodied from a previous case.
During that time, some local people were standing around on the sidewalk watching in the direction of the protests and listening to handheld radios, looking more concerned than they had earlier in the day and yesterday. But for the most part, the rest of the city has seemed remarkably unaffected by the protests in their midst. I've had 3 different taxi drivers seem genuinely surprised after a month of protests to find themselves stuck in traffic. Street markets and other commerce are carrying on like normal, even quite near the protests. Whenever a few soldiers are seen waiting around, nobody pays any attention to them. Tonight, just beyond the line of ambulance boats and navy boats, regular dinner cruise boats continued passing back and and forth. Some TVs and radios in public places are tuned to the news coverage, but not all.
Over the past couple weeks in the north and even in Laos, I frequently saw people gathered around televisions in bus stations and cafes to watch "red shirt TV," the channel broadcasting the protesters speeches. That's the same channel that the government forced off the air two days ago and again yesterday after the protesters briefly took control of the TV station and had it back on the air.
-Robert
