Thailand Latest: Curfew and Ultimatum (AP and BBC)

The Associated Press updates this morning on the Thai Government's imposition of a curfew in Bangkok. A BBC report, issued at the same time, focuses on a Government "ultimatum" against the main opposition camp and protestors gathering elsewhere in Bangkok:

Associated Press

Thailand will impose a curfew Sunday and send Red Cross workers to evacuate women and children from Bangkok's deadly protest zone where 25 people have been killed in four days of street battles between anti-government demonstrators and troops.

Thailand: The Latest in the Crisis; At Least 16 Dead (Mydans and Szep/Ahuja)

A towering column of black smoke rose over the city Sunday as protesters facing off with troops set fire to tires serving as a barricade. Elsewhere, they doused a police traffic post with gasoline and torched it as sporadic gunfire rang out.


The government said a curfew has become necessary to stop the armed members of the so-called Red Shirt protest movement. Journalists have seen some of them carrying guns, but most have used homemade fire bombs and fireworks.

''We cannot let people with weapons in their hands walk around here and there,'' army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

''Terrorist groups have tried to create a situation where shots are fired at military and police officers to instigate misunderstanding among them that officers are attacking each other,'' he said.

The timing and the exact locations of the curfew will be announced later, he said.

The spiraling violence has raised concerns of sustained, widespread chaos in Thailand -- a key U.S. ally and Southeast Asia's most popular tourist destination that promotes its easygoing culture as the ''Land of Smiles.''

Speaking on his weekly television program, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva insisted he was left with no choice but a military operation to end the country's two-month-old crisis.

''Overall, I insist the best way to prevent losses is to stop the protest. The protest creates conditions for violence to occur. We do realize at the moment that the role of armed groups is increasing each day,'' he said.

The Red Shirts have occupied a 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) zone, barricaded by tires and bamboo spikes, in one of the capital's ritziest areas, Rajprasong, since mid-March to push their demands for Abhisit to resign immediately, dissolve Parliament and call new elections.

The Red Shirts, drawn mostly from the rural and urban poor, say Abhisit's coalition government came to power through manipulation of the courts and the backing of the powerful military, and that it symbolizes a national elite indifferent to the poor.

Sansern said the government will send the Red Cross and voluntary organizations into the protest zone to ''invite or persuade people, especially women, children and older people to leave the area.''

About 5,000 people are believed camped in the zone, down from about 10,000 before fighting started Thursday after a sniper shot and seriously wounded a Red Shirt leader, a former army general who was the Red Shirt military strategist. His condition worsened Sunday, doctors said.

After his shooting, fighting quickly spread to nearby areas, which became a no-man's land as the army set up barriers in a wider perimeter around Rajprasong. The area already resembles a curfew zone with no public transport or private vehicles. Most shops, hotels and businesses in the area are shut. The government has shut off power, water and food supplies to the core protest zone. Schools were ordered shut Monday in all of Bangkok.

At least 54 people have been killed and more than 1,600 wounded since the protests began mid-March, according to the government. The dead include 25 killed since Thursday.

''I'm asking Abhisit not to shoot children, women and old people. Come kill us (men) instead,'' said a Red Shirt leader, Jatuporn Prompan. ''Once the authorities stop shooting at protesters, the death toll will stop rising.''

On Saturday, soldiers blocked major roads and pinned up notices of a ''Live Firing Zone'' in one area of Bangkok. Demonstrators dragged away the bodies of three people from sidewalks in that area -- shot by army snipers, they claimed.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch on Saturday called on the Thai government to revoke the fire zones and negotiate an end to the fighting.

''It's a small step for soldiers to think `live fire zone' means `free fire zone,' especially as violence escalates,'' the rights watchdog said in a statement.

The clashes are the most prolonged and deadliest bout of political violence that Thailand has faced in decades despite having a history of coups -- 18 since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

The crisis appeared to be near a resolution last week when Abhisit offered to hold elections in November, a year early. But the hopes were dashed after Red Shirt leaders made more demands.

The political uncertainty has spooked foreign investors and damaged the vital tourism industry, which accounts for 6 percent of the economy, Southeast Asia's second largest.

The Thai Red Cross said its blood supplies are running low and invited people to donate blood.

The Red Shirts especially despise the military, which forced Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist premier favored by the Red Shirts, from office in a 2006 coup. Two subsequent pro-Thaksin governments were disbanded by court rulings before Abhisit became prime minister.

BBC

Bangkok since March, calling on women and the elderly to leave the camp by Monday afternoon.
The Red Cross has been asked to help coax people out of the camp, where protesters are calling on PM Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign.

One protest leader said Thailand was close to "civil war" after clashes with soldiers killed at least 25 people.

Several hundred protesters are gathering in another part of the city.

Soldiers have taken up positions beside a road leading to the camp, where witnesses say they are firing live rounds, apparently targeting anyone who comes near them.

Mr Abhisit has postponed the new school term in the city for a week, but a planned curfew has been cancelled.

Thai television has shown footage of women and children leaving the protest site.

Live rounds

The fighting flared on Thursday as the army moved to isolate a fortified protest camp.

Thousands of people who say Mr Abhisit came to power undemocratically remain behind makeshift barricades of rubber tyres, sandbags and bamboo stakes in the Ratchaprasong commercial district.

The protesters are known as red-shirts, after the colour they have adopted.

They want the prime minister to step down to make way for new elections.

Red-shirt leaders have been calling for reinforcements, but protesters coming from elsewhere in the country have been unable to breach the military cordon, and are congregating nearby.
Several hundred red-shirt suppporters have gathered around a mobile stage set up in central Bangkok's Klong Toey area, and protest leaders have called for a rally at another mobile stage in the north of the city.

Army "prepared"

In a televised address on Saturday, Mr Abhisit said the army would not back down in its operation to clear the protesters.

"We cannot leave the country in a situation where people who don't obey the law are holding hostage the people of Bangkok, as well as the centre of the country," he said.

"We can't allow a situation where people set up armed groups and overthrow the government because they don't agree with it."

Mr Abhisit has said that a few armed "terrorists" are among the protesters.

An army spokesman said the military was planning to enter the protesters' camp if they did not disperse, but gave no timetable.

"There is a plan to crack down on Ratchaprasong if the protest does not end," said the spokesman, Col Sunsern Kaewkumnerd.

"But authorities will not set a deadline because without effective planning there will be more loss of life."

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Bangkok says the army's actions are like squeezing a balloon full of water - they are just pushing protesters into a different part of the city.

Black smoke drifted into the air over Bangkok on Sunday morning but the streets were mostly quiet after three days of fierce battles that saw soldiers fire live rounds and rubber bullets at protesters who threw stones, petrol bombs and shot fireworks in return.

The army has declared live fire zones in some areas as it attempted to cut off the camp from supplies and reinforcements.

Around 200 people have been injured since the latest violence broke out on Thursday, and 27 people have been sent to jail, each given six-month sentences. All the fatalities have been civilians.

More than 50 people have been killed and at least 1,500 wounded in total since the protests began in mid-March, Thai officials have said.

Despite claims by the Thai government that the situation was under control and its soldiers had only fired in self-defence, army snipers have been accused of targeting protesters. Footage from Bangkok on Saturday showed red-shirts dragging gunshot victims to safety.

The violence escalated on Thursday after a renegade general who supports the protests was shot in the head by an unknown gunman.

Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, better known as Seh Daeng (Commander Red), is in a critical condition.

National divisions

The latest clashes have raised questions about the stability of Thailand, South-East Asia's second-largest economy.

"The current situation is almost full civil war," said one of the protest leaders, Jatuporn Prompan. "I am not sure how this conflict will end."

Many of the protesters are from poor rural areas in northern Thailand where support is still strong for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.

They say Mr Abhisit was put into power in a parliamentary vote by an alliance of the Bangkok elite and the military and want him to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.

He had offered polls in November - but the two sides failed to agree a deal because of divisions over who should be held accountable for a deadly crackdown on protests last month.

Mr Thaksin has called on the government to withdraw troops and restart negotiations. He is living abroad to avoid a jail term on a corruption conviction.

Iran Update: The Aftermath of the Executions

0345 GMT: Three days after their executions, the names of Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heydarian, Farhad Vakili, Shirin Alamhouli, and Mehdi Eslamian continue to resonate in discussion of Iran. As of last night, the families were still waiting for the release of the bodies, with claims that they were being pressured to sign an oath that there would be no protests accompanying the funerals. There was also a report that the sister and mother of Shirin Alamhouli were arrested and later released on bail.

Iran Labor Report carried a statement from the lawyer for Kamangar, Alamhouli, and Eslamian:

Khalil Bahramian, in an interview before knowing about the execution said: "Mr. Kamangar and his interrogator told me that there are changes in the case and under review by the prosecutor and execution is out of the question. I inquired more than ten times and they told me the case is under review. But the intelligence officer had told Farzad that execution had been revoked."

Notified of the execution after the fact, Bahramian said in an interview: "The rules call for notification of the lawyers on carrying out the death penalty. In the cases of two of my clients, Farzad Kamangar and Mehdi Eslamian, I was not notified at all."

Bahramian also spoke with a TV interviewer about the events.

The political fallout continues. Amnesty International issued a statement on Tuesday:

We condemn these executions which were carried out without any prior warning. Despite the serious accusations against them, the five were denied fair trials. Three of the defendants were tortured and two forced to 'confess' under duress. They were then executed in violation of Iranian law, which requires the authorities to notify prisoners' lawyers.in advance before carrying out executions.

Human Rights Watch summarises developments and comments:

These hangings of four Kurdish prisoners are the latest example of the government’s unfair use of the death penalty against ethnic minority dissidents. The judiciary routinely accuses Kurdish dissidents, including civil society activists, of belonging to armed separatist groups and sentences them to death in an effort to crush dissent.

Meanwhile, defenders of the Iranian Government outside the country, in the guise of an attack on the coverage of The New York Times, have tried to sustain Iranian state media's account that those executed were guilty of bombings and membership of terrorist organisations.

The Latest from Iran (5 May): "Protest is Not Provocation"

2025 GMT: Locked in Iran. Activists are reporting that Mohammad Sadeghi, a member of the central branch of the alumni association Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat, has been banned from leaving the country.

2015 GMT: Labour Watch. Iran Labor Report offers a full summary of the recent pressure upon the Free Assembly of Iranian Workers with threat, arrests, and interrogations by Iranian security forces.

2010 GMT: Humour Failure. Update on the Bin Laden In Tehran, No, He's in Washington, DC story: looks like the US State Department doesn't realise that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was having a bit of a joke with his American interviewer.

NEW Iran Follow-Up: Ahmadinejad “Bin Laden Lives in Washington DC!”
NEW A Female Detainee in Iran: “Stripped by the Basiji”
Iran Video and Transcript: Ahmadinejad on Charlie Rose (3 May)
Iran Document: Mehdi Karroubi “The Movement Has Spread Everywhere”
Iran: Bin Laden Lives in Tehran Shocker!
The Latest from Iran (4 May): Beyond the “Main Event”

1930 GMT: Maryam Abbasinejad, the former secretary of the reformist Islamic Association at Tehran University, was arrested by security forces on 1 May. The detention followed protests by students against President Ahmadinejad’s speech on campus.


One week after their arrests, there is still no information on the condition of Alireza Hashemi, the secretary general of the Iranian Teachers Organization, Ali Akbar Baghbani, the secretary general of the Teachers Trade Union, and Mohamoud Beheshti Langarudi, the spokesman of the Teachers Trade Union.

1400 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Vahid Talai, a member of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s legal team, has been arrested.

Ali Tajernia, a former member of Parliament and leading member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been imprisoned again. Tajernia was arrested shortly after the June 2009 election and subsequently sentenced to six years in prison plus 70 lashes . The sentence was reduced to a year after appeal.

1225 GMT: Media Moment of the Day. Did you think that news couldn't get more absurd after Fox News's pseudo-story "Bin Laden in Tehran", which we took apart yesterday?

Well, you hadn't counted on a prominent American anchorman taking the story so seriously that he would try and spring it on President Ahmadinejad. We've got the lurid tale, complete with Ahmadinejad's response, in a separate entry.

0825 GMT: Oil and the Revolutionary Guard. Thomas Erdbrink writes in The Washington Post:

Taking advantage of the very sanctions directed against it, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is assuming a leading role in developing the country's lucrative petroleum sector, Western oil executives and Iranian analysts say.

The Guard's engineering companies, replacing European oil firms that have largely abandoned Iran, have been rewarded with huge no-bid contracts.

0805 GMT: A Deal on Uranium? We wrote on Monday about President Ahmadinejad's New York adventure:

There is a chance that, behind the scenes, there may be some meaningful manoeuvring over the “third-party enrichment” proposal for Iran’s uranium stock, given the presence at an international gathering of brokers (Turkey, Brazil), the “5+1″ powers taking up the issue (Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany, and, most significantly, the US), and Iranian officials.

Well, well. Fars News is now reporting that, in a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced "agreement in principle" to Brazil mediating a deal on uranium enrichment.

But, and we ask the question for the 484th time, can the exchange of Tehran's current uranium stock for 20%-enriched fuel take place outside Iran?

0755 GMT: Curbing the Lawyers? Iranian lawyers have warned that new regulations threaten the independence of the Bar Association.

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. Rah-e-Sabz claims a "worker's crisis" in the cities of Tehran, Kerman, and Eslamshahr with the closure of plants, including a major tyre manufacturer and a ceramics factory. The site claims that some workers have not been paid for six or seven months.

0710 GMT: Corruption Watch. The head of Iran's armed forces, General Hossein Firouzabadi, has given this "reassurance": there are less than 1000 corrupt people in the Government and Iranian administration.

0700 GMT: Surprise of the Day --- Conservative Turns Reformist? Leading conservative member of Parliament Ali Motahari was speaking at Tehran University yesterday and, if Rah-e-Sabz is to be believed, was sounding distinctly un-conservative.

Motahari allegedly said that one has to distinguish the behaviour of the Government and even clerics from "Islam", and he asserted that the velayat-e-faqih (Supreme Leader) has to be elected and only be an observer of politics. ,

And more: Motahari supposedly argued that the regime should have given the people the right to protest last summer and state media should have broadcast the demonstrations, that dissident professors should be allowed to teach at universities, and that the judiciary is not independent.

Motahari did apparently tip his hat to the party line with the claim that, while Ahmadinejad played a role in the election uproar, Mousavi carries an even greater responsibility.

0630 GMT: The Female Detainee's Story. We have posted in a separate entry the account of an Iranian woman detained on 11 February, "Stripped by the Basiji".

0515 GMT: The Ahmadinejad sideshow in New York trundles on. Having "run circles around" around Charlie Rose of the US Public Broadcasting Service, as an EA reader aptly put it (note to Mr Rose: you might want to hire a researcher on Iran's internal situation before Mahmoud drops by on his next promotional tour), Ahmadinejad offers a shorter interview to Al Jazeera English.

Hopefully, the immediate media temperature over the media will drop, so we'll venture back to Tehran's internal matters and related issues. As Farnaz Sanei of Human Rights Watch dared to note during the furour over Ahmadinejad at the United Nations: "The focus on that potential danger [of Tehran's nuclear programme] should not obscure the fact that thousands of people are currently experiencing not just a threat of violence from the Iranian government, but the everyday dispensing of it."

UK Deportation Postponed

Britain's deportation of Bita Ghaedi, the Iranian woman who fled because of alleged domestic abuse and claimed she would be persecuted on return to Tehran, has been delayed by judicial action. Both the UK High Court and the European Court of Human Rights ordered a halt to the process.

Ghaedi had been put on a flight for Iran from London today. Now she will face an oral hearing on 21 July; her attorney is petitioning for bail.

Khatami: "The Plaintiffs and Defendants Should Change Place"

More on Mohammad Khatami's comments to former members of Parliament yesterday: the former President insisted that "protest is not provocation" and said, ""We should not raise any charges against the protesters. I am sure, if the judicial system correctly performs its functions, then the plaintiffs and defendants will change place."

Khatami noted, "The parties and groups are not allowed to operate and their activities are limited. They face the threat of closure and the newspapers are just closed. Which of these steps corresponds to the constitution?"

Top Reformist Arabsorkhi Released

Feizollah Arabsorkhi, a leading member of the reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, has been released on bail. Arabsorkhi, arrested in June, had been freed briefly for Iranian New Year but then returned to Evin Prison.

Cracking Down on the Students

Deutsche Welle posts a feature article on Iranian student protest and the attempt by authorities to suppress it through detentions and lengthy prison sentences.