But for the past eight years, Thailand has been in the grip of an extraordinary political crisis, pitting two intransigent mass movements, known as Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts, against one another, each ready to take to the streets whenever it feels that the other has gained the upper hand. More than one hundred people have been killed in political violence as the crisis has unfolded and many more have been injured. Four elected governments have been removed from power, two of them by military coups d’état, the second of them on May 22 this year, when the army commander in chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, took control of the country after several months of disorder.