Thai authorities fired tear gas and sent in troops as a self-styled “people’s uprising” of protesters tried to storm the prime minister’s office and other state buildings yesterday, heightening fears about the stability of southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.
Tens of thousands of activists besieged high-profile state targets around Bangkok on what demonstration leaders branded “victory day”, spinning the country into its worst security crisis since 2010, when street battles left scores dead and paralysed parts of the capital for two months.
Protesters over-ran the state television station building and forced Yingluck Shinawatra, the prime minister, to flee to an undisclosed location. Their actions are seen by some analysts as a strategy to spread disorder and provoke the kind of intervention by the military and the courts that has toppled previous Thai governments.