International Counter-coup in Thailand crushed

Press, 12 October 1976, Page 8

International Counter-coup in Thailand crushed

NZPA

Bangkok

Thailand's five-day-old military regime has dismissed a senior army officer and moved to quash a potential counter-coup d’etat by “young Turks” within the Army, according to senior military sources in Bangkok.

They say that General Chalard I liranyasire, an outspoken former assistant Army Commander, was called before the 24 members of the new Administration Reform Committee.

General Chalard was considered by his colleagues to be a competent commanding officer.

The sources also say that a list has been drawn up of more generals and lowerranking officers suspected of collaborating with General Chalard. “We cannot disclose details of this plot for security reasons,” said one general on the body that has ruled Thailand by martiallaw decree since Wednesday of last week.

Special units continue to man security check-points in Bangkok, searching for suspected subversives. Vehicles mounted with heavy-calibre machine-guns patrol the streets.

However, the Thai capital is bustling with activity, and schools have reopened their doors after having been closed for almost a week.

Although General Chalard is known to have support in both the military and the Rightist Thai Nation Party, any remaining threat to the new military regime does not appear serious. The ruling committee is composed of most of the key military commanders in

the country. General Chalard; and a few of his associates; had been excluded from the junta. General Chalard is reported by the Bangkok sources to be under security surveillance. Apparently he did not respond immediately to the committee’s order to appear at Supreme Military Headquarters in Bangkok.

The sources say that the committee had ordered the tapping of telephones and surveillance of potential trouble-makers in the armv. and had indicated that some might be dismissed from their posts. General Chalard, who earlier this year had been removed from his Assistant Army Commander’s post to a Defence Ministry staff appointment, was “not in tune” with Admiral Sangad Chaloryoo, the head of the military regime, the sources sav.

Security is tight at Supreme Headquarters, where members of the committee have been living since brutal fighting broke out last Wednesday between Leftist university students and Right-wing groups. It was these disturbances that led to the military take-over. The police continue to [comb universities, bookshops, and printing houses, confis-

jcating mounds of Communist documents and literature.

I Books and pamphlets found at an office of the activist National Student Centre of Thailand were burned by the police and Right-wing groups, but an expected mass bookburning has yet to take place. The police say that they are detaining a number of printing press owners for investigation, most of them ethnic Chinese. About 1000 people, mostly university students, have been detained by the police, who have, however, released another 2000 on bail.

Many were arrested during or after the fighting at ' Thammasat University, ' Bangkok, on Wednesday of last week. 1 Two Chinese-made mortars, and one Soviet-made K 47 assault rifle which the police say were seized at the urii- ! versity, have been shown on nation-wide television. An assortment of other ] weapons, Communist docu- ; ments, and flags, and a : “chart” outlining a plot to 1 seize power in Thailand, are ; said to have also been found : at the university, vyhich has 1 been a centre of student ; radicalism. 1 It is difficult to confirm such reports, although Leftist literature certainly abounded on the campus before the military coup d’etat.