From 14 March 2010 onwards, a mass of suea daeng, literally ‘red shirts’, began a prolonged
mass protest in Bangkok. The Red Shirts is the unofficial name given to the
protest movement known in Thai as naew ruam pra-cha-thi-pa-tai to tan pa-det kan
haeng chat, translated as The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
They demanded the dissolution of parliament and fresh elections, which seemed certain
to empower a party aligned with ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who
had been ousted by a military coup four years earlier. A former police lieutenantcolonel
turned telecommunications tycoon, Thaksin revolutionized Thailand’s political
landscape when his Thai Rak Thai Party won a landslide victory in the 2001 general
elections.