Thousands of Thai rubber farmers protested in the country’s south on Tuesday, calling for help from the government in the face of slumping prices, in the latest challenge for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Police said about 13,000 people had joined several demonstrations on highways and outside government offices, mostly in rubber producing regions in southern Thailand, the opposition’s heartland.
Protest leaders estimated the turnout at several tens of thousands, although so far Bangkok and other popular tourist destinations have not been affected.
Thailand is the world’s top exporter of natural rubber and farmers say they have been hit hard by weak global markets.
“We, the farmers, cannot earn enough money to cover the cost of the farms,” Boonchot Romyen, a representative of rubber farmers from southern Thailand, told AFP by telephone.
The farmers have accused the government of ignoring their plight while spending billions of dollars on a rice price guarantee scheme seen as mainly benefiting ruling party supporters.
The protesters had called for farmers in other regions of the country to encircle the capital Bangkok in a more widespread demonstration.
But the government said it had persuaded many farmers not to participate.
The government earlier rejected demands to guarantee a rubber price of 120 baht ($3.7) per kilo — about 50 percent higher than the current price on world markets.
Instead the cabinet on Tuesday approved an offer of 1,260 baht per rai (0.4 acres) of rubber plantation to help with production costs, along with funds to boost the efficiency of rubber processing.
Thailand has been rocked by several mass protests in recent years, with both supporters and opponents of Yingluck’s brother — fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra — taking to the streets.
In 2010 two-month demonstrations in Bangkok by the pro-Thaksin “Red Shirts” drew 100,000 protesters at their peak before being crushed in a military crackdown under a previous government.
More than 90 people, mostly civilians, were killed during the demonstrations and nearly 1,900 were injured in Thailand’s worst political bloodshed in decades.
While the authorities have expressed concern that the rubber protests could turn violent so far they have remained largely peaceful.
Police blamed the fatal shooting of a man at a rally on Sunday on a personal dispute.
Thai rubber farmers rally in test for government
