This is a guest post with photographs by ANON.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Activists and people in the red shirt movement organized the event Building, dead bodies and the emergency decree at the memorial “14 October 1973”, a memorial built to remember those who died fighting against the dictator on that date.  This event was organized to raise funds to help the victims and their families, affected by the Thai government crack down during the pro-democracy Red Shirt Political protests in April 2010 and May 2010.

In this event there was an auction of the photographs taken during the red Shirt protests, and the money from the auction will go to all the victims and their families.  The event also had a cultural programme, with drama and music.  The highlight of this event was that at 5.30 all the participants walked from the memorial to the Democracy Monument at six o’ clock after singing the national anthem. All the participants, mostly dressed in red shirts or some with their faces painted as a ghost, suddenly lay down as if they had been shot dead by a sniper.

Through these actions, the organizers want to warn Thai society that even now everything seem to be normal but even in the last couple of months there were people who were shot dead by snipers during the peaceful political rally. The government will not investigate and bring the criminals to justice. The government has failed to perform its duty, and its decision to use force and weapons to “take back the area” from the peaceful and unarmed protesters is against international norms of mass control.

One more interesting thing from this activity was that all the participants showed their middle finger as the sign of neutrality and shouted out loud 2 slogans –   “I saw the dead body” and “Somebody died here”.

One should keep in mind that Bangkok, as well as some major cities such as Nonthaburi Pathumthani and Chaing Mai and some others, are still under the emergency decree which prohibits public gatherings of groups of 5 or more persons.