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| Southeast Asia |
| Vow to fight on from hiding |
| 2009-04-21 |
| [Straits Times] THAI anti-government protesters will continue their campaign against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, one of their leaders said on Monday from an unknown location abroad where he is in hiding. Jakropob Penkair, a senior member of the so-called 'Red Shirt' protest movement loyal to ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, said he had fled the country to avoid an arrest warrant for inciting violence. 'We have got ourselves in a safe place and we are setting up an office which we will obviously use to continue the movement,' Mr Jakropob told AFP in a telephone call diverted by an assistant to avoid detection. 'We have developed some strategies so we have had to spend time analysing the situation,' said Jakropob, who was briefly a minister in a previous, pro-Thaksin government last year. Pro-Thaksin demonstrators shut down an Asian summit in the beach resort of Pattaya on April 11 and then clashed with troops in Bangkok on Monday. Two people were killed and 123 injured in the unrest in the capital. The Red Shirts want Mr Abhisit to quit and call elections, saying that he came to power unfairly in December after a court toppled Thaksin's allies from power. Thai authorities have issued arrest warrants for Thaksin, who is living in exile, and 12 other senior members of the movement accused of inciting violence, including Jakropob. Mr Jakropob said that there had been disagreement within the Red Shirts over whether to abandon their three-week vigil outside Mr Abhisit's offices last Tuesday, although he was not there at the time it dispersed. 'The decision to call off the gathering was not consensus but I respect the decision taken by those in the field because I was not there myself,' he said. 'Because I couldn't monitor the situation from outside I decided when it became the way (to disperse the protest) to leave the country.' He said that he was 'in touch' with Thaksin, who was until recently in Dubai, 'but he's not instructing what we do here.' |
| Posted by:Fred |