October 7, 2009
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thousands of Thailand's "Yellow Shirt" protesters rallied in Bangkok Wednesday, a year on from violent clashes with police that rocked the capital, leaving two dead and hundreds injured.
On October 7 last year, police fired tear gas into crowds of demonstrators from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) as they marched on parliament and angry PAD mobs retaliated with gunfire and fighting.
The unrest followed months of Yellow Shirt protests aimed at removing Thailand's elected government over its ties to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they helped to oust in a September 2006 coup.
Around 5,000 people gathered early Wednesday at the capital's Royal Plaza to peacefully mark the anniversary, led by Sondhi Limthongkul -- the group's founder and newly elected leader of the movement's new political party.
"We regard those who died during our fight, and the many hundreds who lost their limbs and became blind, as our heroes," Sondhi told the crowd, a day after becoming chief of the New Politics Party at its first general meeting.
"We will not allow your fight to be a waste. We will keep on fighting to uphold our nation, the legality of the state and the constitutional monarchy," he added.
After the clashes, the royalist PAD were quick to blame the police for the unrest, and Sondhi told his followers Wednesday that they would find and bring to justice "the culprits who brutally suppressed our heroes."
The Yellow Shirts' protests peaked last year with a crippling ten-day seizure of Bangkok's two main airports from late November, which effectively toppled the pro-Thaksin government.
The new political party formed from the group has said its aim is to promote a "clean politics" free from corruption, symbolised by adding green to the yellow of its logo.
Twice-elected Thaksin, supported by the rival "Red Shirts" in Thailand's colour-coded politics, fled the kingdom in August last year to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption.
The country remains deeply divided between his mainly rural supporters and his foes in the Bangkok-based power cliques of the palace, military and bureaucracy, who have tacitly supported the yellow-clad protesters.
