Coup anniversary: Arrests after anti-junta protests

Police arrested several anti-junta activists on Friday for small protests marking a year since Thailand’s generals seized power from the elected government, as the defiant junta leader said the country “may have collapsed” without his intervention.

A group of die-hard campaigners called ‘Resistant Citizen’, who have repeatedly defied the junta’s ban on political protests, were prevented from marching to a court in Bangkok to file treason charges against junta chief <g data-gr-id="24">Prayut</g> Chan-O-Cha. At least four of the group were arrested, an AFP photographer said.

Meanwhile seven students were wrestled to the ground and detained for holding an anti-coup banner in the northeastern city of Khon Kaen, a bastion of support for Yingluck Shinawatra whose government was toppled by the May 22, 2014 coup.

Student activists who have previously held creative “flash mob” acts of dissent -- including readings of George Orwell’s anti-authoritarian novel “1984” and flashing the three-fingered salute from the Hunger Games films -- have also said they will hold a protest in downtown Bangkok on Friday evening. But widespread dissent appeared unlikely with the country still in lockdown.

Thailand’s military took over last May after months of violent protests by anti-government supporters paralysed the elected administration of Yingluck Shinawatra.

She was dumped out of office by a court ruling two weeks before the coup. Martial law was imposed two days before the coup by the military.

Her supporters say the putsch was the latest assault by the royalist Bangkok-centric elite on the kingdom’s burgeoning democratic forces -- in particular from the culturally distinct northeast, which has voted Shinawatra parties to power in every election since 2001.