Rights group calls for justice two years after crackdown
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The government has failed in making those involved in the 2010 crackdown accountable for their actions, the Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
“Those affected by the upheaval and their families are still waiting for justice because successive governments have not kept their promises to hold the abusers accountable,” John Sifton, the New York-based organisation’s Asia Advocacy director, said.
This statement comes two years after then-PM Abhisit Vejjajiva deployed troops to bring a red-shirt protest to an end on April 10, 2010, provoking a clash that left 19 protesters, six soldiers and a Japanese journalist dead. After two months of clashes between protesters and security personnel, the protest finally came to an end, with the death of 92 people and leaving parts of the capital in flames.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government is offering compensation to the victims though nobody has yet been held accountable for the deaths, injuries and property damage, Human Rights Watch said. Instead, the Pheu Thai government is pushing for a political reconciliation that would include a blanket amnesty.
“The reconciliation proposal is about enabling powerful people on all sides to get away with committing grievous crimes,” Sifton said. “Everyone wins, except the victims.”
Thai governments have granted amnesty to those behind bloody crackdowns on anti-government protests in 1973, 1976 and 1992.
