Bangkok, April 29: Thailand’s anti-government “Red Shirt” protesters on Thursday called for the European Union to send observers to Bangkok to prevent a crackdown as rival “Yellow Shirts” readied their own rally.
A day after clashes between the opposition demonstrators and troops left one soldier dead and 18 people injured, the Reds said they would go to the European Union delegation in Bangkok to ask the body to help in the crisis.
“The government used force to crack down on innocent protesters, and it is likely there will be further violent crackdowns,” Red leader Jaran Ditsatapichai said on a stage at the movement’s main demonstration site.
The movement — which wants immediate elections — released a letter it planned to submit to EU Ambassador David Lipman making an “urgent request” for the body to send monitors to Bangkok to prevent another crackdown.
Thailand is reeling from its worst political violence in almost two decades in the capital, where 27 people have died and almost 1,000 have been injured this month in a series of bloody confrontations.
Many of the Reds come from Thailand’s rural poor and urban working classes and seek the return of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and now lives overseas to avoid a jail term for corruption.
The country is largely split between the Reds, and the pro-government Yellow Shirts who staged their own street protests that heralded a 2006 coup ousting their enemy Thaksin.
Thousands of Yellows planned to gather on Thursday in front of an Army base where Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his cabinet have been working since demonstrations began last month.
The Yellows’ rally, the first by the movement since the rival Reds began their own mass protests in mid-March, comes amid mounting fears of factional violence between the two camps.
“We will demand that the government spell out a clear plan to end illegal rallies and terrorism, and we will call on the Army to use its power to end anarchy,” Suriyasai Katasila, a Yellow Shirt spokesman, told Thai television.
The group said it would take similar action on Thursday morning at 40 Army bases across the country, but Suriyasai said there were no immediate plans to hold rolling street rallies like the Red Shirts.
Leaders of the Reds, who have for weeks occupied a main commercial area in the heart of Bangkok, expressed surprise at authorities’ measures on Wednesday, when troops fired at protesters on a highway in Bangkok’s northern suburbs.
–Agencies