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BANGKOK: Thailand's "Red Shirt" protesters loyal to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra ended a peaceful rally in Bangkok Sunday with the promise of more anti-government gatherings in the future.
Thaksin, who is living in exile to avoid a jail term for corruption, urged a crowd of around 25,000 followers not to leave him "dying in the desert" of Dubai in an impassioned telephone address late Saturday.
The crowds stayed overnight in a historic quarter of central Bangkok and dispersed at around 6.00am on Sunday (2300 Saturday GMT) after a 14-hour rally marked by several spells of heavy rain, police said.
Police said the demonstration was peaceful as the protesters had promised, but more than 3,000 officers and 1,000 soldiers were on hand during the event to guard government offices and search the crowd.
Billionaire telecoms tycoon Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and saw his allies driven from government late last year after protests by the rival "Yellow Shirt" movement.
He made a 50-minute speech on Saturday night, telling the cheering, red-clad crowd: "We come here because we want to see real democracy. We hate injustice and double standards".
"I am fine and doing some business and travelling around but I am really lonely, I want to go back," Thaksin said. "Why do you have to leave me dying in the desert when I can work for our country?"
Appealing to his grassroots support base in the poorer north of Thailand, he said current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government was "good for three things: borrowing, hiking taxes and hounding Thaksin."
In the largest anti-government rally since bloody Red Shirt riots erupted two months ago, protesters repeated their demands for British-born Abhisit to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.
They also berated royal adviser Prem Tinsulanonda, whom they accuse of instigating the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin.
Protest leader Jatuporn Prompan said they would organise three more gatherings, without saying when they would be.
During his weekly television programme on Sunday, Abhisit made no mention of the rally.
The Red Shirts stormed a key Asian summit on the Thai coast on April 11, forcing its cancellation, before rampaging through the capital, leaving two people dead and 123 injured, and prompting Abhisit to declare emergency rule.
Protesters clashed with security forces in Bangkok over two days but finally dispersed after troops surrounded them and threatened to move them by force.
Since Thaksin was toppled, Thai society has been wracked by deep divisions between his supporters among the largely rural poor and the powerful Bangkok cliques in the palace, military and bureaucracy.
The royalist "Yellow Shirts" who opposed Thaksin staged protests last year that led to a nine-day blockade of Bangkok's airports. The siege left more than 300,000 visitors stranded, denting the kingdom's tourist-friendly image.
- AFP/yb
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