Thousands of Thai protesters swarmed over main Bangkok streets on Monday, firing an early salvo against a contentious planned amnesty law that threatens to trigger the return of a debilitating national political conflict.
Demonstrators led by the opposition Democrats brought traffic in the business district’s Silom Road to a halt amid a deafening cascade of whistles, while another large group of marchers paralysed roads between Samsen railway station and the royal Grand Palace.
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The gatherings are a sign of growing tension as the government tries to push through a bill that could allow the return from self-exile of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who is the dominant and most divisive figure in the politics of southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.
Police said around 10,000 people demonstrated across Bangkok, with protesters thronging Silom Road at a peaceful lunchtime rally that attracted a crowd ranging from smartly-dressed professionals to activists draped in the colours of the national flag and bearing plastic clappers proclaiming their love for King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Demonstrators denied the gathering was an effort to block a comeback by Mr Thaksin, whose powerful appeal to the rural poor has enabled parties sympathetic to him to defeat the more establishment Democrats four times at the polls in the past 12 years. The proposed amnesty bill – which is due to go to a vote in the Senate later in November, having been passed by the lower house of parliament last week – could annul corruption cases that have prevented Mr Thaksin’s return to Thailand for several years.
“I am not worried about Thaksin,” said Manas Araya, a 32-year-old product designer, explaining his opposition to the amnesty bill. “But I don’t want the law to set a standard where people can do bad things.”
A big draw for the Silom Road demonstrators was Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Democrats’ leader and prime minister between 2008 and 2011, who was last week charged with the 2010 murder of some of the 90 protesters killed during nine weeks of battles in the capital between pro-Thaksin “red shirts” and pro-Democrat “yellow shirts”. Although Thailand rode out the international damage to its reputation for stability then, there was never serious domestic reconciliation – and people across the political spectrum and the business world are worried about the potential for a repeat.