{"id":23874,"date":"2014-01-22T07:52:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T12:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23874"},"modified":"2014-01-22T07:52:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T12:52:57","slug":"thai-protests-trigger-state-of-emergency-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/22\/thai-protests-trigger-state-of-emergency-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai protests trigger state of emergency declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC News<\/em><\/a> on the Thai government’s attempts to deal with the ongoing protests:<\/p>\n

The Thai government has imposed a 60-day state of emergency in the capital, Bangkok, and the surrounding provinces, from Wednesday, to cope with unrest.<\/p>\n

The decree gives the government wide-ranging powers to deal with disorder.<\/p>\n

Anti-government protesters have been blocking parts of the capital to try to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra to resign.<\/p>\n

They accuse the government of being run by exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, the brother of the current prime minister.<\/p>\n

Ms Yingluck has refused to resign and has called an election on 2 February to pacify the protesters.<\/p>\n

The state of emergency was announced after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday and comes after a spate of attacks with explosives and firearms on the anti-government protesters blockading central Bangkok for which the government and the protesters blame each other.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, 28 people were injured when grenades were thrown at one of several protest sites set up at major road sections in the city.<\/p>\n

“The cabinet decided to invoke the emergency decree to take care of the situation and to enforce the law,” Deputy Prime Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said.<\/p>\n

The emergency decree gives the government power to censor the media, ban public gatherings and detain suspects without charge. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

George Talusan, a friend and former co-worker of mine was on vacation in Thailand recently and posted some brilliant photos to his Facebook feed. I’ve asked his permission to include a few of them here:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1983.jpg\"<\/a>
A protester stops his motorcycle and holds up a handmade sign near Lumpini Park (Jan 13)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2225.jpg\"<\/a>
PDRC protesters wave flags at Victory Monument (Jan 14)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1035.jpg\"<\/a>
Suthep Thaugsuban delivers a speech at Asok BTS (Jan 15)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2710.jpg\"<\/a>
PDRC protesters are offered water during a sit-in at Royal Thai Police HQ (Jan 15)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4964.jpg\"<\/a>
PDRC security guard poses outside Royal Thai Police HQ which had been vandalized after a sit-in (Jan 19)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC News on the Thai government’s attempts to deal with the ongoing protests: The Thai government has imposed a 60-day state of emergency in the capital, Bangkok, and the surrounding provinces, from Wednesday, to cope with unrest. The decree gives the government wide-ranging powers to deal with disorder. Anti-government protesters have been blocking parts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,84,53],"tags":[945,459,188,212,720,657],"class_list":["post-23874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-government","category-politics","tag-bangkok","tag-censorship","tag-electionwatch","tag-freedomofassembly","tag-protest","tag-thailand"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6d4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23874"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23882,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874\/revisions\/23882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}