⁍ Reuters image of night of Oct. 16 has become one of the most widely published of months of demonstrations.
⁍ For Anurak Jeantawanich, 52, it was the moment when he tried to stop them.
⁍ He had witnessed a bloody crackdown on ‘red shirt’ anti-establishment protests a decade ago.
– An iconic photo showing a Thai man pushing against riot police has become a symbol of the country’s unrest, but the man in the photo isn’t one of the protesters. “If I had to risk my life to protect the young people and for our victory, I’d do it,” Anurak Jeantawanich, 52, tells Reuters. “It would be worth it.” Anurak says he jumped out of his seat to face police as they counted down to disperse protesters on Oct. 16. “I looked each of them in the eye and told them not to come any closer, that there were a lot of young students and girls,” he says. Seconds later, police started firing what they have described as water containing chemicals that cause skin irritation, which went over his head and directly at protesters behind him. “I rushed to push back against them,” he says. “There was no fear in my heart. If my daughter was behind me, so were the sons and daughters of other people.” Police pushed. Anurak fell back. He described being yanked off his feet and “crowd-surfed like in concerts” by rows of police, before being cuffed with cable-ties and put into a police wagon. From inside the vehicle, he said he heard water cannon being fired and shouts from protesters, some of whom scattered before the protest was halted for the day. The images of that night stirred greater anger and brought much bigger protests until Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha last weekend ordered a stop to emergency measures he had imposed on Oct. 15.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/thailand-protests-protester/a-picture-and-its-story-danger-was-coming-lone-protester-who-defied-thai-police-idUSL4N2HI2UG