Khattiya Sawatdiphol (Seh Daeng)

Pedro Ugarte/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images

Updated: May 14, 2010

Khattiya Sawatdiphol is a renegade Thai general who was severely wounded on May 13, 2010, as the military was preparing to encircle the barricaded encampment of anti-government protesters. The general was shot in the head during an interview with a reporter for The New York Times.

The attempted assassination of General Khattiya appeared to have stirred the protesters' ire and contributed to deadly clashes between them and Thai troops on May 14. General Khattiya has been on life support, but his doctor said his chances of survival were "almost nil."

The general, better known as Seh Daeng, was an incendiary figure who was in charge of security for the Red Shirts, who have occupied parts of downtown Bangkok since March. Many of them are from poor rural areas.

General Khattiya has been called a terrorist by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who named him as the chief obstacle to a compromise plan to end the protesters' sit-in in return for an early election in November. Commanding his own paramilitary force of former Rangers, General Khattiya was suspended without pay from the armed forces. A special committee was considering whether to strip him of his rank.

In an interview on May 9, he had denied being responsible for any violence. "I deny!" he cried in English, with a laugh, when asked about the dozens of bombings that have set Bangkok on edge and about the mysterious black-shirted killers who escalated the violence on April 10 that killed 25 soldiers and civilians. "No one ever saw me."

On May 12, as leaders of the protesters mulled over the prime minister's offer, one of the leaders said that a group of 400 to 500 protesters would hold out in what he described as a fortified area under the general's command.

Two days later, Thai troops fired tear gas and bullets at protesters, who responded with stones, slingshots and homemade rockets, as the military tried to seal off a large encampment. Four people were killed and 81 wounded in the clashes.

The protests in their broadest terms pit the rural and urban poor against the more affluent middle-class establishment of the capital as Thailand struggles to redefine its political balance of power. The protests stem from a 2006 military coup that removed Thaksin Shinawatra, a tycoon turned prime minister; the political party he led and one succeeding it were dissolved by the courts. Thailand's rural underclass found an electoral voice in Mr. Thaksin, rallying to his defense since his ouster. Mr. Thaksin lives abroad, evading a two-year prison term on a conviction for corruption.

Thailand's dueling protest movements — the anti-Thaksin "Yellow Shirt" demonstrations versus the pro-Thaksin "Red Shirt" rallies — are the most visible signs of the divides bedeviling Thailand's constitutional monarchy. The royalists, who wore yellow to show their support for the monarchy, based their protests around the notion that one-person-one-vote democracy could not work in a country with so many poorly educated citizens and involved accusations of corruption against Mr. Thaksin.

In November 2008, when a pro-Thaksin government was in power, the Yellow Shirts closed Bangkok's two international airports, stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers. They camped out on the lawn of the prime minister's residence for several months, blocking access to government officials. Mr. Abhisit came to power after a court ruling forced out a pro-Thaksin government on what many of his supporters considered a technicality.

Mr. Thaksin's supporters fly the national red-white-and-blue flag, wear red and express more republican leanings: They support the monarchy, they say, but insist it should remain above politics. The Red Shirt protest movement accuses the current government of favoring the country's wealthy elite and has reacted angrily to a series of court decisions in recent years banning political parties allied with Mr. Thaksin.