The Thai government’s crackdown on “red shirt” protesters last spring was planned nearly four years in advance and modelled on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, a report contends, saying Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva approved military force against unarmed civilians.
The report also alleged two Bangkok hospitals colluded with the Thai government to cremate bodies of civilians killed in skirmishes and to destroy evidence of possible crimes.
The report, prepared by the red shirts’ Toronto-based legal team, is expected to be filed with the International Criminal Court on Monday. It is asking the court to investigate whether the Thai government’s actions constituted crimes against humanity.
An estimated 90 people died and nearly 2,000 were wounded in clashes with government forces after demonstrators took to the streets of Bangkok, demanding Abhisit dissolve the legislature and hold elections.
A draft of the report, obtained by the Star, alleges Abhisit, along with senior government and army officials, began drawing up plans for suppressing anti-government protesters shortly after he assumed power in a military coup in 2006.
The plans included the construction of a full-scale mock-up of Rachadamnoen Ave. — an upscale street sometimes known as Bangkok’s Champs Élysées — where protesters were killed and injured last April 10, the report contends. The mock-up, which was built at a training ground used by the 11th regiment of the Thai army, included “killing zones.”
Thai military personnel, including snipers, rehearsed at the mock-up as early as February 2007, the report alleges.
Immediately after the 2006 coup, the country’s leaders came to a consensus that the red shirts would eventually rise up in protest, so they began planning military countermeasures, says the report, which names 15 senior Thai government, army and police officers.
“It is safe to say that the Royal Thai Army carried out an attack against the red shirt civilian population according to a ‘state or organizational policy’ devised and approved at the highest levels of the country’s civilian and military leadership,” lawyers Bob Amsterdam and Dean Peroff argue in the report.
It was prepared on behalf of the National United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, the formal name for the red shirt movement.
Amsterdam has acknowledged that former Thai prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in the 2006 coup, is helping to pay the movement’s legal expenses.
As part of their application to have the court investigate the events of last spring, the lawyers say they have affidavits from 88 witnesses who saw soldiers shoot at unarmed civilians, including three nurses, in a Buddhist temple on May 19, as well as affidavits from another 255 who witnessed the deadly April 10 confrontations.
Many of the witnesses are quoted in the report.
The application also includes a statement from “Anonymous Witness No. 22” — described as an amalgamation of testimony from several active-duty officers in the Thai military, who would be in grave danger if their identities were exposed, though the lawyers say they will provide all names to the court’s prosecutors.
That Thai military officials would provide evidence to assist the red shirts isn’t entirely surprising. Last month, The Economist magazine reported many army and police officers secretly support the protesters and feel the government crackdown was unjustified.
While loyally patrolling Bangkok’s streets by day in their green uniforms, some even showed up at demonstrators’ encampments at night dressed in red shirts, earning them the nickname “watermelons” (green on the outside, red on the inside).
One potential obstacle the red shirts face in getting the court to consider their complaint is whether Thailand comes within the court’s jurisdiction.
Thailand was not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which brought the court into existence in 2002, so the court would normally not have the authority to launch an investigation into the government’s activities.
But Amsterdam and Peroff argue the court still has the power to investigate Abhisit for possible crimes against humanity because he is a British citizen, born in England on Aug. 3, 1964.
The court has the authority to investigate and prosecute people who are citizens of countries that are its members, which the United Kingdom is.
While Thailand is not a member of the court, it is a member of the United Nations, and the UN Security Council can ask the court to investigate the government’s role in last spring’s demonstrations to determine whether it amounted to criminal activity, the report says.
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