A prolonged and increasingly violent stand-off between government and Red Shirt protesters in Bangkok is worsening and could deteriorate into “an undeclared civil war,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
“The Thai political system has broken down and seems incapable of pulling the country back from the brink of widespread conflict,” the Brussels-based conflict resolution group said in a report released late on Friday. “The stand-off in the streets of Bangkok between the government and Red Shirt protesters is worsening and could deteriorate in undeclared civil war.”
Thailand should consider help from neutral figures from the international community, drawn perhaps from Nobel peace laureates, to avoid a slide into wider violence, it said.
PHOTO: AFP
Clashes between the military and the Red Shirts, made up of mostly rural and urban poor, have killed 27 people and injured nearly 1,000 in a seven-week-old drive to force early elections.
Dozens of mysterious explosions have hit the capital, including grenade attacks on April 22 in the business district that killed one and wounded scores.
Bangkok anxiously awaits an army operation to eject the Red Shirts from their tent city, fortified with ramshackle barriers of tires and bamboo poles, which could lead to a bloodbath.
The fault lines are widening between the establishment — big business, the military brass and an educated middle class — and the protesters, many of whom support former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 coup.
Civil society groups brought the government and the protesters together but the talks faltered over when to hold elections. The Red Shirts offered a 90-day time-frame, but the prime minister rejected that last weekend.
The crisis comes as Thailand faces its first prospect of royal succession in more than six decades.
The government has stepped up accusations that the Red Shirt movement has republican leanings — a provocative claim in a country where many consider the king almost divine — and that key figures are part of a loose network to overthrow the monarchy.
The report recommended the creation of a high-level group of international figures, noting that Nobel Laureate and East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta was in Bangkok this week on his own initiative and could be joined by other figures.
The group should bring the two sides together to end the military operation and limit the protests “to a small, more symbolic number of people who do not disrupt life in Bangkok.”
It could also begin negotiations on an interim government of national unity and preparations for elections.
The government is unlikely to welcome such mediation. The foreign minister this week upbraided Western diplomats for talking with Red Shirt leaders at the encampment, which lies near embassies in the area that could be affected by violence.
The crisis has cast a pall over the economy, decimating the tourist industry, closing businesses and depressing consumer sentiment.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to