THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

About 10,000 protesters remained milling around outside the Public Relations Department.
By 6:00 p.m. there were also 20,000 outside the Royal Hotel. They booed and jeered the
troops, waving bloodied clothing and challenging the soldiers to open fire. The troops fired
repeated volleys over their heads. By 8:30 p.m., the crowd had swollen dramatically, buses were
commandeered to block [Rachadamnoen] Avenue, vehicles were set on fire, and large cement
flower tubs lined up as barricades. The crowds continued to jeer, shouting anti-Suchinda slogans.
Troops and demonstrators clashed in battles to control the area in front of the Public Relations
Department. At 8:40 p.m., troops opened fire on about 30,000 protesters, and again at 10:20 p.m.
On both occasions the firing was for sustained periods, and more than 30 were feared killed.
Demonstrators covered the bodies of the dead with the national flag. In a video tape recording, an
officer was heard to instruct the troops to shoot at will. The same footage showed a demonstrator
who was running away cut down in a hail of automatic gunfire. The number of unarmed civilians
killed in the rally remains unknown. [Murray, Angels and Devils]
Around 5 a.m. on the morning of May 19, troops stormed the Royal Hotel, which was being used as a
makeshift medical centre to treat wounded protesters:
The whole world (apart from Thailand) saw this "heroic" military action on television. Unarmed
demonstrators on the pavement outside were ordered on their faces, and some were trampled on.
As the soldiers burst into the lobby of the hotel. everybody was ordered to lie down, and those
who were a little slow to respond to the command were beaten to the ground. Bodies were kicked
and stomped on. At least 1,500 demonstrators, stripped to the waist, with hands tied behind their
backs were carted away in military trucks at 5:40 a.m. A further 1,000 male protesters in the
small groups of resistance that remained were rounded up and trucked out by 8:30 a.m. The
resistance in Rachadamnoen Avenue had finally been crushed.
The Avenue was deserted. Smoke still curled from the shells of the government buildings that had
been burned. Thousands of sandals were scattered about. The scorched, wrecked bodies of cars,
pickup trucks, three petrol tankers and seven buses littered the street. The pavements and roadway
were strewn with glass. [Murray, Angels and Devils].
The front page of the Bangkok Post newspaper on May 19, 1992 can be viewed here. Some detail from
the newspaper on May 18 is here.
Many of those who fought shoulder-to-shoulder in the name of democracy against the military in May
1992 are now leaders on opposite sides of Thailand's yellow-versus-red political divide, a point made
poignantly by Karuna Buakamsri, herself a student protester in 1992 and now one of Thailand's most
respected journalists and television anchors, in an article in the International Herald Tribune in 2010.
Even after the bloody clearing of Rachadamnoen Avenue, the protesters refused to be broken. In the
evening of May 19, they rallied at Ramkanghaeng University in the east of the capital. By midnight,
50,000 people were gathered there. Despite attempts to shut them down, some Thai media defied
restrictions to bravely report what was happening. More - and far worse - carnage seemed certain.