Critic targets Thai PM in 'pungent' protest

Khamphong Samart, 56, was arrested as he prepared to throw a second bag of cow dung at the prime minister's house in central Bangkok after a first bag got stuck on a fence. He was charged with defacing property and causing public embarrassment to others.

Police said Khamphong was a supporter of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who believes that Abhisit's government persecutes the former leader and his supporters while failing to punish its political allies for their crimes.

Just over five weeks ago, another man hurled four bags of human excrement onto Abhisit's lawn, and last week, a 45-year-old man with a reported history of mental illness threw a bag of human feces at Abhisit's Democrat Party headquarters.

The recent attacks came in the context of heightened tensions in Thailand. Thaksin's supporters plan a major protest this Friday, demanding that Abhisit dissolve parliament and call new elections.

However, such attacks are a minor political tradition in Thailand.

In March 2005, a newly elected member of Parliament from what was then Thaksin's ruling party was hit by a bag of human excrement as he campaigned for a fellow party member running for Bangkok's city council.

The lawmaker, Mana Kongwuthiphanya, was traveling in the back of a slow-moving open truck when the bag hit him on the back and splattered on him and his colleague.

A more spectacular case, captured by TV cameras, occurred in 1994 when a law tutor threw a bag of human excrement at the then Commerce Minister Uthai Pimchaichon during a news conference.

It burst on impact.

The tutor said he was angry that Uthai had reinstated a Commerce Ministry official accused of corruption.

Associated Press