Thailand’s seemingly unending political crisis reached another moment of tension on the weekend of March 12 with huge opposition rallies that organizers said they hope will paralyze the city and bring down the government, reported The New York Times. While pledging nonviolence, rural protesters gathered in the hundreds of thousands for mass rallies and blockades of government offices. The government, concerned about violence, invoked the Internal Security Act, which handed control over to the military, with the right to impose curfews, set up checkpoints and restrict the movements of demonstrators. The rural invasion of the capital emphasizes the complex divisions in the country, which in their simplest terms pit the rural poor against an urban establishment whose primacy is under threat.
