Thailand: PM invokes security law after protesters storm foreign and finance ministries

Yingluck Shinawatra. Photograph by Moritz Hager/WEF

Thai anti-government protesters have occupied the country’s finance ministry and stormed through the gates of the foreign ministry plunging Thailand into political uncertainty. In response, Prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has invoked the Internal Security Act in an attempt to keep the peace by imposing curfews, operate checkpoints, and restrict the movements of protesters, but has said that force would not be used to clear them form government buildings.

Thousands of “yellow shirt” demonstrators, led by the opposition Democrat party, took to the streets across Bangkok, stepping up their campaign to oust the current Thai prime minister. One of the leaders of the protest, former deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban, described the protest as a pushback against the continued influence of the fugitive former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, the current prime minister’s older brother.

Protesters cut the power supply to the finance ministry before forcing their way inside in a bid to halt the functioning of the government. They have set up sleeping mats inside the building, with many drawing similarities with the 2008 shutdown of Bangkok’s main airport by opposition activists in 2008, which began two years of unrest and instability in the country.

As more than 100,000 yellowshirts swarmed over certain sectors of the Thai capital, pro-government protesters, known as “redshirts”, massed elsewhere in the city raising fears of another period of bloodletting similar to that which paralysed Bangkok in 2010 as the two sides fought street battles.

Yingluck denies being a proxy politician for her exiled brother, and has vowed to fight the upcoming no-confidence vote that has been tabled against her for Tuesday.