[Rapport] Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide.

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT
Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide

Bangkok/Brussels, 5 July 2010 : The Thai government should immediately lift the state of emergency to create conditions for national reconciliation that would allow the building of a new political consensus and the holding of peaceful elections if the country is to return to stability.

Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, says the protracted tussle between the royalist establishment and those allied with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has left the country deeply polarised. In April and May it sparked the most violent political confrontations in decades, killing at least 90 people, injuring nearly 2,000 and inflicting deep wounds on the national psyche. Shortly before authorising a violent crackdown on anti-government protestors by the army, the establishment-backed government of Abhisit Vejjajiva unilaterally offered to opposition groups a “roadmap” to national reconciliation. It now persists with this plan despite having created an atmosphere of repression where basic rights of the pro-Thaksin “Red Shirt” movement are denied by emergency laws.

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