Thai NGO center for potential disappearance of protesters set up
www.chinaview.cn 2009-04-15 18:49:27   Print

    BANGKOK, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's pro-democracy groups, led by the Student Federation of Thailand (SFT), announced on Wednesday an establishment of a center for reporting the disappearance of protesters after the recent scattered rioting due to anti-government rallies.

    The center is to cover the possible appearance of people, who involved with the anti-government protests, starting from April 8 to 14 in capital Bangkok, Suwalak Lam-u-bon, SFT executive director said during a press conference.

    Based on evidences from pictures, video, and news reports by foreign media, it is possible some anti-government protesters might have died, while some others might have disappeared during the Thai army crackdown on the protesters, Suwalak said.

    "So, relatives of the affected protesters can tell information concerning this to our center, or appeal through the center," said Suwalak.

    Meanwhile, the SFT has viewed that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva should resign, or the government should dissolve the House as responsibility for using violence to disperse the protesters recently, said Suwalak.

    "The SFT has disagreed with the violence applied to deal with the protesters, recently," said Suwalak.

    In a related development, Thailand's major opposition Puea ThaiParty disclosed on Wednesday preliminarily over 30 protesters were feared of disappearance during the recent political chaos based on information reported to the Party by relatives and friends of the protesters.

    "However, we have not yet blamed any side since we need to further investigate. Preliminarily, it is possible some people might have really disappeared, while the others might have been traveling to enjoy the Songkran Festival after the protests ended," Party spokesman Prompong Nopparit told Xinhua.

    The Songkran Festival is Thailand's traditional new year, starting from April 13 to 15.

    The Puea Thai Party will raise this issue during a meeting of the key members of the Party on Thursday, said Prompong.

    Since Sunday afternoon, the Thai government has declared a state of emergency in capital Bangkok and some districts of five nearby provinces, citing escalating violence due to the scattered-anti-government rallies.

    Prior to the state of emergency's declaration, on Saturday the anti-government protesters stormed into the venue of the then-ongoing ASEAN summit at beach resort Pattaya and related summits, resulting in the cancellation of all of the summits.

Editor: Wang Guanqun
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