The Washington Post - USA (2020-10-20)

A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2020

The World

BOLIVIA

Morales’s party claims

win in presidential race

Evo Morales’s party has claimed
victory in a presidential election
that appears to sharply shift
Bolivia away from the conservative
policies of the U.S.-backed interim
government that took power after
the leftist leader resigned and fled
the country a year ago.
The leading rival of Morales’s
handpicked successor, Luis Arce,
conceded defeat M onday, as did
interim president Jeanine Áñez,
a bitter Morales foe who had
dropped out of the race while
trailing badly in opinion polls.
No formal quick count of results
from the Sunday vote has been
released, but two independent
surveys of select polling places
showed Arce with a lead of about
20 percentage points over his
closest rival — far more than

needed to avoid a runoff.

To win in the first round, a

candidate needs more than

50 percent of the vote, or

40 percent with a lead of at least

10 percentage points. The

independent counts showed Arce

with a little over 50 percent of the

vote and a roughly 20-point

advantage over centrist former

president Carlos Mesa, who

acknowledged defeat. O fficials

said final results could take days.

Morales was barred from the

race, and he faces prosecution on

what are seen as trumped-up

charges of terrorism if he returns

home from exile in Argentina.

— Associated Press

NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Latest cease-fire frays

amid reports of shelling

Reports of renewed shelling on

Monday challenged the new cease-

fire in the conflict over the

separatist territory of Nagorno-

Karabakh, where f ighting

between Armenian and

Azerbaijani forces has raged for

more than three weeks.

Saturday’s truce was the second

attempt to try to end the fighting

that has killed hundreds since

Sept. 27, after clashes resumed in a

conflict that has simmered for

decades. A cease-fire brokered by

Russia earlier this month quickly

frayed as both sides accused each

other of repeated violations.

Azerbaijan on Monday morning

accused Armenian forces of firing

at its positions in the Azerbaijani

regions of Tovuz, Dashkesan and

Goygol, which lie outside the

conflict zone.

Azerbaijani officials also said

three villagers and a reporter were

wounded in the Agdam region of

Azerbaijan, which they said was

being shelled throughout the day,

along with the Terter region.

The state-run Armenian

Unified Infocenter said Azerbaijan

had shelled the town of Martuni

and villages in Nagorno-Karabakh

overnight, and the Nagorno-

Karabakh military said Azerbaijan

resumed shelling in some areas.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within

Azerbaijan but has been under the

control of ethnic Armenian forces

backed by Armenia since a war

there ended in 1994.

— Associated Press

French police conduct raids

after teacher’s beheading:

French police raided Islamic

associations and foreigners

suspected of extremist religious

beliefs, police officials said, three

days after history teacher Samuel

Paty, 47, was beheaded outside his

school in a Paris suburb by an 18-

year-old of Chechen origin. Police

shot the attacker dead. The teen

had sought to avenge his victim’s

use of caricatures of the prophet

Muhammad in a class on freedom

of expression. Muslims consider

any depiction of the prophet

blasphemous. Interior Minister

Gérald Darmanin said that about

80 investigations were being

conducted into online hate and

that he was looking into whether

to disband about 50 associations

within the Muslim community.

Nigerian protesters storm

prison, free inmates: Nigeria’s

protests over police brutality

turned violent when a crowd

stormed a prison and freed

inmates in Benin City. Local media

reports said that as many as 200

prisoners may have escaped.

Protesters also attacked police

stations and police trucks

elsewhere in the country. For more

than two weeks, Nigeria has been

rocked by youth demonstrations

against police brutality. The

protests began in response to a

video showing a man being

beaten, apparently by members of

the police Special Anti-Robbery

Squad, known as SARS. In

response to the protests, the

government said it would disband

the SARS unit, but the

demonstrations have continued.

Pakistani police arrest son-in-

law of exiled former premier:

Pakistani police briefly detained

the son-in-law of exiled former

prime minister Nawaz Sharif,

accusing him of leading a crowd in

a chant against the military at the

tomb of the country’s founder,

Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Chanting

political slogans at Jinnah’s tomb

is considered taboo. The arrest of

Mohammad Safdar came after

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League

opposition party joined protests

against the government of Prime

Minister Imran Khan. Safdar was

freed after a court granted him

bail, his party and family said.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY SHIBANI MAHTANI

AND PARITTA WANGKIAT

hong kong — This past week-
end, Lalisa could not look away
from her smartphone.
Clicking between Twitter,
Insta gram and secure messaging
app Telegram, the 27-year-old,
who lives a comfortable middle-
class life in Bangkok, was not
consuming her usual online fare
of South Korean actors and fash-
ion. She was instead furiously
joining newly established Tele-
gram groups telling her what to
pack and where to assemble for
yet another mass protest in
d efiance of Thailand’s military-
linked government and monar-
chy. Most of the posts were from
protesting guides for last year’s
demonstrations in Hong Kong,
translated into Thai.
“With guidance like this, it
made it easier for me to prepare
and just pack everything I need in
one backpack,” she said, provid-
ing only her first name for fear of
arrest. “We have learned from our
previous experiences.”
Young, digitally savvy Thai pro-
testers like Lalisa are at the fore-
front of a swelling anti-govern-
ment movement that has broken
the mold in Thailand — both by
shattering the long-held taboo
against criticizing the powerful
monarchy and by revolutionizing
mass protests and dissent in the
country.
Shedding the old strategy of
occupying streets, which made
protesters an easy target for po-
lice, demonstrators today have
borrowed from their Hong Kong
counterparts, subscribing to the
“be water” strategy of fluid gath-
erings.
“This is the first time in Thai
history that protesters are unpre-
dictable, leaderless and moving
like water,” said Tattep Ruangpra-
paikitseree, secretary general of
the Free Youth group, which orga-
nized the first anti-government
protests. “Since the beginning,
our group has wanted to be like
the protesters in Hong Kong.
They are the model for such a
movement.”
The result so far has been
harder for police to control, even
in the context of Thailand’s long
history of crackdowns on politi-
cal movements. In recent days,
police officers have privately ad-
mitted to being outmaneuvered,
unable to arrest demonstrators
en masse or to prepare crowd-
control weapons ahead of time.
Police have “never experienced
this before,” said a 21-year-old
officer deployed to Bangkok,
speaking on the condition of ano-
nymity because of the sensitivity
of the protests. “The protesters
disappear even before we arrive;
we cannot tackle the protests by
using our old methods.”

Eluding authorities

The protests began this sum-
mer, calling for greater democrat-
ic freedom in Thailand, reforms
to the constitution and the resig-
nation of Prime Minister Prayuth
Chan-ocha, the general who won
disputed elections last year after
leading the army in a 2014 coup.
The movement gained even
more momentum when student
leaders took aim at the monarchy
— once an untouchable subject in
Thailand, which has some of the
strictest lèse-majesté laws in the
world. They began speaking out
about the monarchy’s deeply em-
bedded place in politics and soci-
ety and the wealth of King Vajira -
longkorn.
On Thursday, the Thai govern-

ment issued an emergency decree

in an effort to end the protests,

the first sign of a mounting crack-

down against the movement. It

served only to galvanize the dem-

onstrators, who gathered in the

tens of thousands Friday before

they were dispersed by water

cannons.

Lalisa was among the crowd

gathered near the glitzy Siam

Paragon mall on Friday. Admit-

tedly a protest novice, she was

settling in for a meal of fried

chicken and burgers close to the

front lines of the demonstration

when a voice in the crowd shout-

ed “Run!”

Stuffing her laptop in her bag

and stumbling in her rubber flip-

flops, she dashed as far as she

could, unclear about where she

was even going.

“I thought in my head, ‘Are we

running from bullets?’ ” Lalisa

said. “All around me were stu-

dents in uniform, running in fear,

without knowing where they

should go.”

Eventually Lalisa found a taxi,

checked Twitter and realized they

had narrowly escaped blue-dyed

liquid shot from water cannons.

“I was horrified by all the pho-

tos coming up that day,” she said.

“It made me feel afraid of joining

the protests in future.”

Soon, a clearer strategy

emerged, borrowed from coun-

terparts in Hong Kong. By the

next day, Telegram groups had

started to take shape, some with

more than 100,000 members.

Collectively, they voted on where

to gather and shared advice on

what to bring, mirroring online

discussions held in Hong Kong’s

financial center last year.

Lalisa joined four such Tele-

gram groups, and ditched her

laptop in favor of a backpack

stuffed with goggles, masks, wa-

ter bottles, an umbrella and a

helmet.

When authorities shut the

transit system, she took a taxi as

far as she could go with friends

and walked the rest of the way.

She was overcome with emotion

when she saw thousands of others

at the protest site, many of them

young people like her, participat-

ing in a political movement for

the first time. When the crowds

overwhelmed 4G connectivity,

rendering apps useless, she

switched to AirDrop to communi-

cate.

Later that evening, upon hear-

ing that water cannons were

heading their way, Lalisa and

f riends rushed to a nearby

7 -Eleven, where shopkeepers

gave them packs of bottled water

free. The protesters took the bot-

tles to a makeshift medical sta-

tion nearby, where first respond-

ers and an ambulance were on

standby, and then posted infor-

mation on the supplies on the

Telegram groups and Instagram.

That time, however, the can-

nons never came.

“Maybe the police couldn’t

plan their operation because of

our flash-mob strategy,” she said.

‘It is now their time’

Hong Kong activists, mean-

while, took to social media over

the weekend with declarations of

solidarity with the Thai protest-

ers, encouraging them to contin-

ue following the fluid style of

demonstrations they had pio-

neered. Observers see coopera-

tion between the two sides as part

of a growing movement called the

“Milk Tea Alliance,” a term coined

by the demonstrators to reflect

the shared commitment to de-

mocracy, a fondness for the

brown-hued beverage and a deep

suspicion of China.

There is now “open coordina-

tion between Hong Kong and

Thailand, and a kind of ‘protest-

sharing’ tactic,” said James Bu-

chanan, a lecturer at Bangkok’s

Mahidol University International

College.

Several prominent activists in

Hong Kong, including Joshua

Wong, protested at the Thai Con-

sulate on Monday, Buchanan

pointed out, and Thais are help-

ing to coordinate a campaign

online for 12 Hong Kong activists

detained in mainland China

while fleeing to Taiwan. A Thai

activist urged people to tweet the

hashtags #save12hkyouths and

#MilkTeaAlliance, so they would

trend globally.

Since the weekend, protests

have begun to grow outside the

capital, spreading to the strong-

holds of “red shirt” country —

more-rural areas where ousted

prime minister Thaksin Shinawa-

tra and his populist style of

p olitics still maintain huge sup-

port. Thaksin’s enduring popular-

ity has destabilized Thai politics

for decades, prompting pro-

monarchy coups and sometimes

bloody protests.

This time, there is no evidence

he is behind the demonstrations,

which are led by a youth move-

ment.

Prayuth, the prime minister,

said Monday that he had no plans

to extend a state of emergency

outside the capital.

Mayuree Fungfueng, 62, a core

member of the red-shirt network

in the northern city of Chiang

Mai, said she is proud of the

young demonstrators’ resource-

fulness. Her generation, she said,

had “limited capacity and access

to information.”

“We were the grass roots, and

we had limited resources,” she

said. “But the young people today

can sustain themselves. They

have resources and knowledge, so

they can be their own leader.”

“The time of our red-shirt gen-

eration is over,” she added. “We

will support them and back them

up, but it is now their time.”

[email protected]

Paritta reported from Bangkok.

Thai protesters following the Hong Kong playbook

Leaderless, digitally driven rallies confound officials with moves adopted from streets of Chinese territory

JACK TAYLOR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

TOP: Thai protesters calling for greater democratic freedom carry umbrellas to ward off tear gas at a rally Sunday in Bangkok.

BOTTOM: A 2017 pro-democracy gathering in Hong Kong. Umbrellas became a symbol of protest in the Chinese territory.