Around Bangkok 10:45am – 1:20 pm April 14th

After waking up I read in the Bangkok Post that the military was getting ready to disperse the Redshirts along Phitsanulook road so I decided to try to head there to see what was happening. Unfortunately I found all roads into the area blocked by Thai soldiers and they were only letting in people with press passes. I took a motorcycle taxi around to see if we could find a way in but it seemed that they had all roads into the area blocked. Eventually I stopped at Wang Deng intersection along Phitsanulook road where a group of Redshirt sympathizers had gathered at one of the road blocks set up by the government.

While there a truck passed through the intersection with some soldiers in the back. The crowd started to throw water bottles at the soldiers and one soldier responded by firing a few shots into the air. While I didn't manage to get any pics of this (it happened very fast) it was incredibly clear that the soldier was firing into the air and not into the crowd. This is important because about 10 min after the truck passed a couple of the Redshirt sympathizers came up to me wanting to show me something. They first asked if I had just gotten there to which I replied that I had (I'd been there about 20 or so minutes). They then told me that a some soldiers had just driven through the intersection and shot at them and that they had proof. They then took me to a guy who was holding some casings from the soldier who had quite clearly fired into the air.

Now while I believe the rumors I heard about 100 people being killed at Din Daeng and people being killed at Victory Monument and Uruphong the day before to wild rumors that some Redshirts simply too easily believed this I can only consider to be an outright lie. There was absolutely NO WAY that anyone with 1/2 a brain cell could interpret that soldier's actions as being anything but firing into the air. The soldier was in the back of a pick up – and thus already situated higher than the protesters and he quite clearly had his rifle pointed at the sky when he let off the shots. If he had wanted to fire at the protesters he would have had to aim down in order to target them AND he would also have been quite likely to hit some of the police and soldiers manning the road block as the protesters were located between the truck and the police manning the road block. Someone was clearly lying about what had happened.

Besides the incident with the soldier firing into the air and constantly having people come up to me to tell me how the government was killing people in cold blood the only other incident at this location occurred when a truck with women tried to get past the road block. The truck had two women in the back and it was loaded with water and food. At first the truck half heartedly made like it was going to ram the police. It then backed up and slowly approached the road block with the women in the back crying and waiing at the soldiers. Eventually the policy performed a cursory check on the truck (I assume to make sure it wasn't carrying any weapons) and then let it through to go down the road towards the other Redshirts.

Believing that there wasn't going to be any conflict here I wandered around a bit trying to find a way past all of the police. Eventually I found a way past one of the road blocks. I managed to get to Ratchadamnoen Nok where I could see that there were no Redshirts around and the burned buses from the previous night had been pulled off the main road onto the side sois. I managed to get to just ouside the UN HQ at Makhawan where I was stopped from going any further by another road block of soldiers. At this point I could already see a group of soldiers further down the road walking through what was Redshirt HQ and reports were coming in that the protest leaders had decided to surrender so I headed back home.