What a coup! Live from Bangkok
Hello! We are Coup 2006 plus four hours and live from the southeastern suburb of Bang Na. Thailand’s capital is under military seige yet again as grumpy old men struggle to decide who gets to be boss.
A neighbour came home at about 10.20pm complaining that traffic was bad on account of soldiers shooting at cars nearby, but this just sounds like an excuse at this point. We’ve heard no gunfire.
The Nation was already reporting at 9.30pm that TV Channels 5 and 9 had been told to stand by to broadcast an urgent message, but regular programming continued on all channels until 10.20, except Channel 7, which had been playing old video footage of His Majesty the King for some time.
At 10.20 the programming was abruptly replaced with an image of the royal emblem, and it was some time before a written message appeared onscreen saying the Army and Police commanders were in the process of bringing order to the chaotic streets and everyone should remain calm.
BBC, followed 10 minutes later by CNN, lit up with Breaking News bulletins around 10 saying there were tanks in the streets of Bangkok, possibly confirming rumours of a coup that had been circulating for weeks. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was at the United Nations in New York waiting to hear what George Bush had to say about the new world order.
Minutes later, The Nation reported that Thaksin had declared a state of emergency in Bangkok and would be returning home ASAP.
BBC and CNN were soon reporting that Thaksin’s scheduled speech to the UN had been moved up from Wednesday to Tuesday – “in a short while” – so that he could fly to Thailand.
Likely because of this, just before midnight, local cable operator UBC shut down its BBC, CNN and MSNBC feeds with a message card saying “sun outages” had interrupted broadcast and sorry for the inconvenience. No other UBC programming was affected though.
The Thai channels continued with their royal videos except for two occasions, about half an hour apart, when some old geezer who Ae thinks was the head of the government’s communications sector came on to read brief messages. These were to the effect that Army Commander in Chief Sonthi was running the show and no other army, navy or air force units were to leave their bases unless told to do so.
So far they seem to be obeying, but the greatest fear is that those units loyal to Thaksin will mobilise against the troops already controlling Government House and stationed at the Royal Palace and the King’s residence, Chitrlada Palace.
For some mysterious reason the olf geezer was replaced after mignight by a good-looking female newsreader from the military-controlled Channel 11. Maybe they shot him for fumbling the messages. (Just kidding.) She didn’t have much to say either.
Internet access has remained intact, but I’ve been unable to get at The Nation website for some time. It could be overloaded or uploading, or my computer could be too damn slow for it. I’m getting my bytes from True Corp, which Thaksin used to own.
At 1.30 the lights went out while I was having my dinner, but this turned out to be because the hamster running the building’s electricity generator had expired. They do this regularly. Tonight it was particularly disconcerting for some reason.
2.15am: The newsreader showed up with video shot from the back of a journalist’s car. He was following the chiefs of the armed forces to the palace, where they’d been summoned by the King. Sonthi was going along with him, although it wasn’t clear if he’d been invited.
2.30am: The newsreader announces that the coup leaders have declared the rest of today a public holiday. It’s good that the stock market will be closed because it was heading for freefall. Sonthi also wants all the heads of the public utilities and universities to come and see him on central Rajdamnoen Road. Uh-oh!
More to come, no doubt.
Thanks for the posts … I am in Seattle with good net access to The Nation, BBC, CNN, etc. Can I help or forward anything to you?
Phil
We’re just happy that your safe, we couldn’t access the newspapers site either and wondered if they’d cut off internet access. When they read Dorseyland they just might!!
Take care, the Frumplingtons cavalry are on standby if needed
We would like to do an interview with you on our show at 6:50am your time (4:50pm) Vancouver time.
Please email asap at david_r_jones@cbc.ca
To Phillip in Seattle, I really do appreciate your concern and your offer, but fortunately things have since taken on the sheen of normalcy here again, although every time BBC and CNN move to Thai news, the local cable provider cuts them off. The newspapers and their websites are up and running, if a little cautious so far about what they publish, but the news is readily available elsewhere on the Internet anyway, not least at Wikipedia, where a squad of alert contributors got a thorough account posted in short order. Amazing. Thanks again, Phil.
To the Frumplingtons Cavalry, mucho thanks also. Despite one online report that all telecommunications and Internet access were to be cut off at 4am this morning, everything’s intact. I shall blog on, though this coup business, being politics after all, can’t hold my attention for long. Did you hear, for example, that they’ve found a shark off Indonesia that walks on its fins?!
Cool stuff. I’ll be landing in Bangkok on the 29th. First time visit. Looks like it’ll be more interesting than I’d thought, although not for the most preferable reasons.
So did you do the CBC interview? Or, you’d be doing that in a few hours from now I guess… I might just turn that on if my brother has television reception here in Ottawa.
Thankyou, Tyland, and I’m sure you’ll have a great time on your visit here. There’s absolutely no indication there will be a counter-coup, so things shud continue to smooth out as time passes. The CBC interview would appear to have fallen through due to the time difference. we only managed an exchange of emails, and by now the coup is fast becoming a non-story. Thanks for coming by.