Monday, December 30, 2013

Thailand: Regime Jeopardizes Future of Royal Thai Police

December 30, 2013 (Tony Cartalucci)  - The regime of Thaksin Shinawatra, run by nepotist proxy, sister Yingluck Shinawatra, staged a bizarre rally next to ongoing anti-regime protests, consisting of approximately 500 police officers. AP in their report titled, "Thai Police Protest Treatment by Protesters," would state: 
Thai police staged a protest Monday to show their frustration after weeks of dealing with aggressive and often violent anti-government demonstrators, with officers saying that the order for them to show restraint has left them vulnerable and humiliated.
About 500 police with family and friends gathered in a public square near the main protest camp in Bangkok, four days after a policeman was shot dead in a pitched battle with demonstrators who were trying to stop candidates from registering for February elections.


And while AP implies that the dead policeman was shot by protesters, even the police's own forensic investigation has revealed that fallen Police Sergeant Major Narong Pitisit was killed by a bullet fired from above. Thai PBS in its article titled, "Chalerm told to clarify “men in black” at the Labour Ministry," stated (emphasis added): 
PDRC spokesman Aekkanat Promphan said on Friday that there was no way that protesters could get into the Labour Ministry’s building and climb up to the rooftop unnoticed whereas all the police were deployed at the centre to prevent protesters from breaking in. 
He added that he would like to know whether Chalerm was aware of the presence of the “men in black” or not as their presence coincided with the clashes between police and protesters in front of the youth centre and the dead victims were shot from a high ground. 
Forensic police confirmed that ballistic test showed that the dead policeman, Narong Pitisit, was shot from a high ground.
The only gunmen located on rooftops in the area were those deployed by the regime itself, indicating it was either accidental friendly fire, or an intentional provocation meant to discredit the protesters and justify an increasingly violent campaign to suppress them. In fact, pro-regime propagandists had warned weeks ago that just such a plan was being set in motion. 


Image: (Left) The chest x-ray of  Police Sergeant Major Narong Pitisit used by the regime itself as evidence he was shot "by protesters" - instead, reveals a bullet fired from above where regime police, alongside unidentified gunmen, were positioned. (Right) Regime police and gunmen were clearly visible and extensively photographed (and video taped) atop buildings overlooking the clashes on December 26, 2013. Bullets fired at both protesters and police from above were most likely fired by these gunmen. 
....

Disgraced former Reuters editor Andrew MacGregor Marshall, now hired pen for Thaksin Shinawatra's lobbyist Robert Amsterdamwould write in a Facebook post titled, "News Update From the Bangkok Protests" that (emphasis added):
Thaksin Shinawatra's secret "black shirt" force of provocateurs, mostly made up of navy SEALS and marines, is back on the streets again for the first time since May 2010 and has infiltrated Suthep's rabble. If protests escalate they will seek to incite deadly violence ahead of King Bhumibol's birthday to discredit Suthep and his movement for good. 
He would also assure fellow Thaksin supporters that if provocateurs killed police "it would not discredit the government." It appears that indeed the regime plotted to kill its own police, carried out the attack on December 26 in Din Daeng district, and is now trying to capitalize on the resulting outrage by staging today's "police rally." 

By politicizing the Royal Thai Police in this manner, when the evidence clearly implicates the regime itself, the regime has threatened the future of this institution. Should the police continue to allow themselves to be used as pawns by the current regime, they, like the now disgraced, clearly politically-motivated Department of Special Investigation (DSI), may eventually find their authority and mission unrecognized and eventually replaced when the Shinawatra regime inevitably falls. 

What is to follow in the wake of the regime's attempts to remove the police's impartiality - will be more bloodshed as the regime attempts to encourage both police and its "red shirt" supporters to individually conduct acts of violence against protesters. It will be amongst these attacks that the regime launches its own assaults conducted by the same professional mercenaries employed by Thaksin Shinawatra during violence in 2010. There have already been nearly nightly attacks on rally sites that have left many injured and one dead