Bloody fighting in Bangkok

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33579, 6 July 1974, Page 13

Bloody fighting in Bangkok

(By RICHARD BLYSTONE of the Associated Press, through N.Z.PA.)

BANGKOK, July 5. ■ Long-simmering resentment between youths and police, as well as a dash of racism and, possibly, some outside influence, turned an

upper-middle class Chinese neighbourhood into a battleground on Thursday and Friday. The people in Bangkok just hate policemen, said one ethnic Thai officer who weathered a four-hour siege at a police station on Thursday night and early today while young ethnic Chinese gunmen shot and cursed at the defenders.

Officers explained that residents around the Plabplachat police station were prosperous enough to buy motor-cycles for their sons, and a rich but violent subculture of motor-cycle gangs had grown up in the neighbourhood of neat and stolid shopkeepers. Frequently the Chinese gangs clashed, policemen said, and the police squads called in to break up the fights were resented, not only because they were

\ police, but because they 'were Thais. I Thailand’s ethnic Chinese are probably more assimilated than in any other ‘nation of South-East Asia. (But as one long-time resident put it, they could speak Thai and adopt Thai names, ibut in their hearts they were still Chinese. The police, moreover, are not popular apy where in Bangkok. Under the defunct military ’ regime they were hated for i arrogance and for shaking

down the helpless. They became still more unpopular by shooting at unarmed students during the uprising last October that brought a change in the Government. They also are widely regarded as ineffective in protecting people from crime. So, when police collared a taxi-driver for illegal parking early yesterday and he yelled that he. was being beaten, the ingredients for a riot w’ere all in place. A mob, many of them i young people leaving a I

movie house, surged toward the police station, throwing rocks and burning cars. The police, mindful of police stations sacked and burned during the violence last October, fired first into the air and then into the crowd, killing seven people and wounding many others. ’rhe taxi-driver reportedly changed his mind by then, but it was too late. A brooding crowd of some 400 watched the police station all day, and when night I fell youths commandeered

two buses and smashed them into a wall, and the fight for vengeance was on.

The metropolitan police chief (Lieutenant General Narong Mahonong) said that the fighting was too intense and the rioters were too well armed to be merely young hoodlums. Citing Ml 6 automatic rifles allegedly used by the rioters, General Narong spoke of a deliberate plan and of a third party behind the outbreak. But he advanced no concrete evidence, for what he said were security reasons.

The Government, to justify an all-out campaign against the rioters, declared it was labelling them Communist terrorists, its term for armed Communistbacked insurgents in the countryside, but no evidence was made public of any Communist connection. The Thai Communist Party, which supports the rural guerrillas, is known to have strong roots in the Thai Chinese community.

Hundreds of Thai police and soldiers broke up bloody rioting in Bangkok’s Chinatown at dawn today and fortified key spots against possible further violence. Authorities said that hospital records showed that 14 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded in two separate outbreaks

of shooting yesterday and today. As peace returned to Chinatown, most shops were closed and streets were virtually deserted. Rubble and bumed-out vehicles cluttered the streets in the wake of hit-and-run bands of rioters, some on motor-cycles and some in commandeered buses.

The police laid in fresh stocks of ammunition and studied maps of the neighbourhood for likely sniper nests as they prepared to enforce the Government’s new get-tough policy against disturbances. More than 80 youths were reported gaoled in the two days of violence.