Thailand: Regime Police Fire Rubber Bullets at Protesters’ Heads

Regime violence will only increase number, resolve of protesters  – sham elections being disrupted.

Several protesters have been sent to the hospital as police began firing tear gas, rubber bullets, and using chemical laden water fired from water canons at the Thai-Japanese Stadium in Din Daeng, Bangkok. Reports and images from the clashes indicate that police have been firing rubber bullets at the heads of protesters, an illegal method that will only escalate tensions and attract more protesters – as was seen early December when protesters began overwhelming police barricades at one government building after another, including police stations, ministry buildings and Government House.
Images: (Top) Protesters clashing outside the Thai-Japanese Stadium – Din Daeng, Bangkok. (Middle) A reporter with visible green armband is hit in the head by a rubber bullet – just one of an increasing number of casualties from today’s ongoing clashes. (Bottom) Hospitals begin receiving wounded – 20 casualties so far – from regime police using fire hoses spraying chemical-laden water, tear gas now effecting the densely populated urban district, and rubber bullets fired at protesters’ heads. 
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Amid the desperate move by the regime, Election Commission officials who were using the stadium to carry out upcoming sham elections organized by the regime, in which only its party will be running in, were partially evacuated by helicopter. Other officials remain trapped as ongoing clashes continue.
Image: Election Commission officials evacuate from the Thai-Japanese Stadium as clashes escalate outside. Theregime’s sham elections, in which only their party was running, are only going to be further disrupted by the use of violence by the regime police. Additional protesters who had returned home after earlier clashes in December and the last mass mobilization, are now reportedly converging on the location.
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Meanwhile, last night, regime thugs sprayed some 20 bullets at the house of anti-regime leader, former Democrat Party MP Sathit Wongnongtoey. No injuries were reported, but indicates the same troubling pattern that preceded violence and death during previous protests, including the pro-Thaksin rally in 2010 in which Thaksin deployed some 300 professional mercenaries triggering bloodshed that would cost over 90 lives. The regime’s notoriously violent “red shirt” supporters have issued threats earlier this week of a planned armed campaign to crush so-far peaceful protests if the regime’s sham elections were disrupted.
Proxy prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra – symbolically holding office in place for her brother, convicted criminal, fugitive, mass murderer, billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra – remains hundreds of miles away from the capital in the northern province of Chiang Mai, one of the last remaining strongholds of support for the regime.

Articles by: Tony Cartalucci

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