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BANGKOK - Defiant "Red Shirt" opposition protesters vowed Monday to keep up their crippling rally in the Thai capital until the deputy premier surrenders to police over a deadly crackdown last month.
Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaungsuban was in charge of security when troops launched an unsuccessful operation on April 10 to clear an area of the capital, leaving 25 people dead and hundreds injured in fierce street clashes.
"If Suthep refuses to surrender himself to police, we refuse to end the rally," a leader of the red-clad protest movement, Nattawut Saikuar, said from a stage in the demonstrators' sprawling encampment in the heart of Bangkok.
"If Suthep surrenders to police, then we will go home," he added.
While arrest warrants have been issued for protest leaders on terrorism charges, "there has been no legal action against the government," he said.
A government spokesman, Panithan Wattanayagorn, told reporters the deputy premier would go to police on Tuesday to hear the complaint, but added that there were no official charges against him.
It was unclear whether the move would satisfy the Red Shirts, who have been holding mass rallies in Bangkok for two months in their campaign for elections to replace the government, defying a state of emergency.
They also reiterated their demand for the government to restore a pro-Red Shirt television channel that was taken off the air last month.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva demanded at the weekend that the opposition demonstrators give a "clear answer" by Monday on whether they would fully accept his peace roadmap, which envisages elections on November 14.
The mainly poor and working class Reds, who broadly support fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, have said they are ready to enter into the reconciliation process, but are suspicious of the government's sincerity.
Abhisit has warned he will scrap the plan for early elections if the protesters do not leave their vast base, which has been fortified with barricades made from piles of fuel-soaked tyres, bamboo poles and razor wire.
The rivals are under pressure from the international community to find a peaceful way out of a tense standoff that has sparked several outbreaks of deadly unrest and paralysed businesses in Bangkok.
Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met Red Shirts and government officials separately on Sunday for what he described as an "illuminating set of discussions".
Thailand is reeling from the worst political violence in almost two decades in its capital, with a total of 29 people killed and almost 1,000 injured in a series of confrontations and attacks.
In the latest violence, two police officers were killed over the weekend in gun and grenade attacks, while a bank and the home of the Thai election commission chief were targeted with a grenade and small bombs Sunday, although nobody was hurt, police said. The Reds denied they were involved.
Crowds at the Reds' camp have swelled to as many as 100,000 people in the past, but last week when a resolution appeared near, numbers dwindled to just a few thousand as a weary air descended on the rally area.
On Saturday, however, their ranks were boosted by 5,000 more supporters who arrived from the movement's heartland in the impoverished rural northeast.
The Reds consider Abhisit's administration undemocratic because it came to power in a 2008 parliamentary vote after a controversial court ruling ousted elected allies of Thaksin, who was himself unseated in a 2006 coup.
They have said the government is intent on clinging to power until at least September to ensure the new army leadership line-up is appointed and the national budget is approved in parliament.
- AFP /ls
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