Thai "red shirts" gather after botched arrests

Fri Apr 16, 2010
Nopporn Wong-Anan and Sukree Sukplang

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thousands of Thai anti-government protesters gathered at a central Bangkok site on Friday after police botched an attempt to arrest three of their leaders as the authorities vowed to crack down on "terrorists."

One protest leader slid down a rope from a hotel balcony to escape riot police, while others were rescued by hundreds of "red shirts," who heavily outnumbered security forces at a Bangkok hotel owned by the family of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The three leaders later joined around 10,000 of their supporters at a shopping center in the middle of the city, now the main site of month-long protests in the Thai capital.

"If they use force to disperse us, we will flatten the entire neighborhood," said Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader who was not among the three escapees, on a red shirt stage at the intersection of posh shopping malls and luxury hotels.

The government, which had previously said it would not directly confront the protesters, also stepped up the rhetoric,

although there were no troops on the streets of Bangkok.

"We will arrest and suppress the terrorists. We have set up special task forces hunting for the terrorists," Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said.

The move against leaders of the red shirts on Friday follows a failed attempt by troops to eject protesters from one of their encampments in the city last weekend. At least 24 people were killed and more than 800 injured in Thailand's worst political violence since 1992.

STOCKS FALL

The risk of further instability in Thailand sent stocks down 2.1 percent and the market has now lost almost all its gains this year.

Thailand's five-year credit default swaps (CDS), often used as a measure of political risk, were trading at 110/115.57 against 105/111 bps on Monday, the last trading day prior to a three-day holiday.

The "red shirts" back Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 coup, and want Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to step down immediately and call early elections, which he has refused to do.

Abhisit had been due to hold his first news conference in four days at 1 p.m. local time (2:00 a.m. EST) but it was delayed, although no reason was given.

Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij told Reuters on Thursday Abhisit would not resign as it would "be very negative for the country.

Protesters called off plans to march on television stations that they accused of biased coverage, removing one potential flashpoint with security forces. They hunkered down at their base in a central Bangkok shopping district, which they vowed to make a "final battleground" with the security forces.

The government has also said it would crack down on people it believed to be financing the red shirts and issued summonses under emergency powers for 60 people to report to a military barracks, where Abhisit has set up emergency headquarters.

The violent protests have hit Thai tourism, with occupancy rates less than a third of normal levels in Bangkok, according to a tour operator body.

According to a report from investment bank Morgan Stanley, losses to tourism, which accounts for 6 percent of gross domestic product, could clip 0.2 percentage point from economic growth this year.

The government believes Thailand's economy could grow 4.5 percent this year, although Korn warned that forecast could prove optimistic.

(Additional reporting by Viparat Jantraprap; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Alan Raybould and Bill Tarrant)

Al Jazeera's "101 East" - Thai red shirts

Red shirts consolidate forces

The area near Phan Fa Bridge on Ratchadamnoen Avenue is practically deserted by Wednesday afternoon after red shirt protesters abandoned the site to consolidate their forces at Ratchaprasong intersection. APICHART JINAKUL

ANALYSIS: The UDD has moved to Ratchaprasong to prepare for what one leader says is the 'final stage' of the fight

15/04/2010
Wassana Nanuam, Mongkol Bangprapa and Achara Ashayagachat
Bangkok Post

The red shirts' strategic decision to move to a single stronghold in the heart of the capital will force the government to abandon any plans to launch another crackdown, a source says.

It means the government's only course to resolve the stalemate will likely be through negotiations.

Four days after the deadly clashes between soldiers and anti-government protesters, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship yesterday abandoned its stage at Phan Fa Bridge to consolidate its forces at one main gathering site at Ratchaprasong intersection.

Last night, tens of thousands of red shirts had gathered in the upmarket shopping district.

''The government said it wanted the Phan Fa area back but never said it wanted Ratchaprasong intersection. So we returned Phan Fa and moved to Ratchaprasong intersection because we do not want another clash,'' UDD co-leader Natthawut Saikua said.

''I hope the government won't demand the return of another area as another excuse for gunning down people again.''

The idea behind shutting down the Phan Fa stage and keeping only one going in the shopping and tourism district is to strengthen the numbers and morale of the anti-government group.

The move is to prepare for the ''final stage'' of the fight against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his administration, said Jatuporn Prompan, another UDD leader.

The UDD yesterday cancelled a march to the 11th Infantry Division to avoid confrontation with the army.

A source at the Centre for Public Administration in Emergency Situations said the one-stage tactic was a strategy to corner the government to end the stand-off by political means only.

The Ratchaprasong area posed a problem for the use of force to clamp down on the demonstrators because there are too many buildings for soldiers to control, the source said.

The location was perfect for snipers to shoot people from high vantage points and a crackdown could cause severe damage to shops, shopping centres and hotels around the occupied area, the source said.

''A decision to crack down on protesters at Ratchaprasong would mean solders would have to take control of every floor in every building, which would require a huge force.

''More importantly, the operation needs units specially trained in an urban operation. I cannot imagine the number of soldiers needed,'' the source said.

''Key UDD leaders have advisers who are current and retired soldiers. They have studied the same textbooks and probably studied at the same army command school [as serving officers].

''They believe the army will probably launch another attack on the Phan Fa demonstration and have decided to move to only one place at Ratchaprasong intersection, which is more difficult for military operations.''

The Phan Fa stage was set up on March 12 and the Ratchaprasong area has been occupied since April 4.

A commander of an army unit in Bangkok said soldiers were very familiar with areas on Ratchadamnoen Avenue as it has been the site of bloody clashes from Oct 14, 1973, to Black May in 1992 and the most recent deadly incident on Saturday.

The officer admitted the army would obviously be at a disadvantage if another military operation was carried out at Ratchaprasong.

''The other side has stayed there for some time. They [their security guards] have checked and prepared for this scenario,'' he said.

Another source at the centre said that if a military crackdown was ruled out, another option for security authorities would be to capture key leaders who are the subject of arrest warrants.

Michael Nelson, a visiting scholar in political science at Chulalongkorn University, said confusion loomed large as the government had still to find those responsible for the bombings and shootings that took place before the April 10 skirmish.

''No one would like to see more casualties. No one would like to see third- or fourth-hand instigators. But the situation is still fluid and the responsibility lies with all sides not to kick-start the next round of mayhem,'' Mr Nelson said.

The UDD's relocation to Ratchaprasong intersection is due to be completed this morning with all traffic routes returned to normal.

Pitsamai Mokekul, 39, from Sakon Nakhon, said the merger of the Phan Fa and Ratchaprasong stages would give the UDD more bargaining power.

''Here we are in the heart of the business quarter. If the government remains defiant, it risks dragging down the national economy,'' she said.

Red shirt protesters call time out for annual water festival

Rescuers Rush to Aid Survivors of China Quake; at Least 400 Dead

Closeup map of China's Qinghai province, locating the epicentre of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake. Rescuers dug with their bare hands through the rubble of a devastating quake which hit a remote area of China, killing 400 people and injuring thousands as it toppled mud-and-wood houses and school buildings. (AFP/Graphic)
Chinese rescue workers search through the rubble of collapsed buildings following a strong earthquake in Qinghai province. Rescuers dug with their bare hands through the rubble of a devastating quake which hit a remote area of China, killing 400 people and injuring thousands as it toppled mud-and-wood houses and school buildings. (AFP/CCTV/Cctv)
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, an injured woman is rescued after a quake in Yushu County, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Wednesday, April 14, 2010. A series of strong earthquakes struck a mountainous Tibetan area of western China on Wednesday, killing hundreds of people and injuring more than 10,000 as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, officials said. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Ren Xiaogang)

APRIL 14, 2010
By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
The Wall Street Journal

SHANGHAI—Rescuers used shovels, pry bars and their bare hands to dig through the rubble of collapsed homes and schools as they raced to find survivors of a severe earthquake that authorities said killed about 400 people and injured roughly 10,000 in a remote, predominantly Tibetan community in western China.

The quake hit shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday, jolting mountainous Yushu prefecture, part of the Chinese province of Qinghai on the Tibetan plateau, and flattening most of the town of Jiegu, one of the area's main population centers. About 97% of the people in Yushu are ethnically Tibetan. Many earn their living raising yaks, sheep and horses.

As darkness fell and temperatures dipped below freezing in Jiegu, hundreds of soldiers, troops from the paramilitary People's Armed Police and other emergency workers searched the wreckage looking for signs of life. Injured townspeople were being treated at improvised medical centers in the town's central square and at a horse-racing track, officials said.

"We are short of equipment," said Guoyang Zhaxi, a 42-year-old resident helping to free survivors. "So the speed of the rescue efforts is very slow." He said nearly all houses in the town—many of which used traditional wood-and-earth construction—had been destroyed. "We need to hurry up or the people who are buried will have no hope," he said.

Chinese seismologists said the quake had a magnitude of 7.1. The U.S. Geologic Survey said the magnitude was 6.9. A series of aftershocks continued throughout the day. Specialized search and rescue teams as well as hundreds of soldiers were being sent to Yushu from elsewhere in China to assist in the hunt for survivors.

Rescuers said their first priority was schools, where there could be large concentrations of casualties. Zhuohuaxia, a spokesman for Yushu prefecture, told the official Xinhua news agency that "many students are buried." Xinhua reported that at least 30 people were trapped when a dormitory building at the Yushu Ethnic Normal School collapsed.

Wednesday's quake in Qinghai also toppled dormitories and other buildings of the Yushu Primary School, where five students were killed, a teacher at the school told Xinhua. "Some pupils ran out of the dorms alive, and those who had not escaped in time were buried," said the teacher, identified only by the surname Chang.

One of the most politically sensitive legacies of the massive 2008 earthquake that devastated large parts of southwestern China's Sichuan province was disputes between parents and the government over the deaths of thousands of students killed when their schools collapsed on them.

Officials said a year ago that 5,335 students were among the 86,633 dead and missing from the 2008 quake. If accurate, that figure would mean school children didn't suffer disproportionately in the disaster, despite evidence of shoddy school construction that drew the ire of grieving parents. The government took stern measures to silence protests.

Tibet activist groups say that Yushu prefecture and Jiegu town were the scenes of protest activities by Tibetan students and others in 2008, when a wave of unrest swept through Tibetan areas of China. In March that year, bloody riots erupted in Lhasa, and widespread demonstrations by Tibetans led to a crackdown by security forces.

Many Tibetans chafe at what they say are government restrictions on their civil liberties and religious practices, and complain that they have missed out on the country's economic boom. The rural per capita net income in Yushu is about $340 a year, less than half the national average.

Ethnic Tibetan residents of Yushu reached by phone Wednesday said relations between them and China's majority Han Chinese, and between locals and the government, weren't strained. Residents said Tibetans and soldiers and armed police from local garrisons worked side-by-side to save lives.

Guoyang Zhaxi said he and employees of his trading and real-estate company had pulled 30 people from the rubble alive, four of whom, including an infant, later died, he said. He said soldiers and police labored to move heavy steel-reinforced concrete slabs to reach survivors trapped below.

A soldier surnamed Li, interviewed by China National Radio, said many people remained trapped in fallen buildings and could be heard calling for help. Local officials said they needed heavy excavating equipment to reach more victims and medical supplies to treat the injured.

Survivors pitched tents and prepared to sleep outside. Relief officials said they would be bringing in thousands of tents, as well as quilts and warm clothes. Temperatures are expected to fall well below freezing overnight. Meteorologists said there was a chance of snow in the area on Friday.

-- Kersten Zhang and Sue Feng in Beijing and Bai Lin in Shanghai contributed to this article.

Thailand's military sticks knife in as election commission rules against Abhisit

[Thailand] Democrat Party faces dissolution

Bangkok Post

The Election Commission on Monday decided by a vote of 4-1 to recommend the dissolution of the ruling Democrat Party for receiving an illegal 258 million baht donation and the alleged misuse of a 29 million baht political development fund provided by the EC.

The decision was made at a special meeting of the EC chaired by Apichart Sukhagganond.

Mr Apichart, who is ex officio political party registrar, presented his recommendation to the commission for consideration.

Commissioner Sodsri Sattayatham revealed earlier the crucial meeting would be held today.

In December last year, the EC resolved that Mr Apichart, as the political party registrar, should decide whether to propose the dissolution of the Democrat Party to the Constitution Court.

Today's decision dealt a severe blow on the Democrat Party, whose leader and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is under unrelenting pressure from the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) to immediately dissolve the House of Representatives and call a general election.

The red-shirts at the Ratchaprasong intersection roared with joy on hearing the news from leader Veera Musikhapong, who said he hoped the case would proceed quickly.

Thousands of UDD's red-shirts on April 5 converged on the EC headquarters on Chaeng Wattana road and accused the commission of the dragging out a decision in the case against the Democrat Party.

Bowing to the UDD's demand, the EC said it would come up with a decision by April 20.

The EC will forward its decision to the Office of the Attorney-General. The OAG then has 30 days to review the case.

If the OAG's decision contradicts the EC's ruling, a joint committee would be set up to consider the case. If the OAG agrees with the EC, it will refer the case to the Constitution Court for a final decision.

The Democrat Party, Thailand's oldest political party, was accused of receiving more than 258 million baht in illegal donations from TPI Polene for use in the 2005 general election and not declaring it. The party was also accused of misusing the Politics Development Fund worth 29 million baht.

The current and previous constitutions limit individual donations to 10 million baht a year.

TPI Polene, a cement firm, was alleged to have made donations totalling 258 million baht to the Democrats through Messiah Business and Creation Co, an advertising company.

The Democrat Party faces possible dissolution and its executives could be banned from politics for five years if the Constitution Court upholds the Election Commission's finding.

Thailand’s protests claim 21

Photo by: AFP

A protestor gets his picture taken next to a seized army armoured vehicle after overnight clashes between the army and “Red Shirt” protesters in central Bangkok on Sunday. Demonstrators vowed to remain on the streets of the Thai capital and bring down the government, the day after the country’s worst political violence in nearly two decades.

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It’s frightening. We heard explosions and people were running all around.

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via CAAI News Media

Monday, 12 April 2010 15:03 Thanaporn Promyamyai

Red Shirts remain defiant after attempts to remove them left over 800 injured; army retreats, calling for a truce after protesters took five soldiers hostage.

Bangkok

DEFIANT Red Shirt Thai protesters vowed Sunday to keep up their bid to topple the government, after the country’s worst political violence in almost two decades left 21 dead and over 800 injured.

Protest leaders, who have promised to maintain their campaign until the government dissolves parliament and calls fresh elections, demanded Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva step down and leave the country.

Seventeen civilians, including a Japanese TV cameraman, and four soldiers were killed in Saturday’s crackdown on the Red Shirt supporters of fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra in Bangkok, the emergency services said.

On Sunday evening Red Shirts gathered to mourn the loss of their comrades at the city’s Democracy Monument – the scene of a fierce battle on Saturday – where grieving relatives led a procession holding up gold-framed pictures of the dead.

They were followed by crying men carrying caskets, a couple containing bodies draped with Thai flags and flowers. Some onlooking protesters prayed and others waved red banners.

It was the latest chapter in years of turmoil pitting the ruling elite against the mainly poor and rural Red Shirts, who say the government is illegitimate as it came to power in 2008 after a court ousted Thaksin’s allies from power.

The violence erupted when troops tried to clear one of two sites in the centre of the capital occupied by the protesters for the past month. Soldiers fired in the air and used tear gas, and the Red Shirts responded by hurling rocks.

As the clashes intensified gunshots echoed around the city, and each side accused the other of using live ammunition. Emergency services said two protesters were killed by gunshot wounds to the head.

The government denied troops had opened fire on protesters with live rounds.

“Weapons were used only in self-defence and to fire into the air. We don’t find any evidence that soldiers used weapons against people,” government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn told a press conference.

Photo by: AFP

Reuters cameraman Hiroyuki Muramoto is shown in Banda Aceh in 2005.

More than 200 soldiers were injured, 90 of them seriously, he said. One of the dead was a colonel.

At one stage protesters overwhelmed and captured an armoured personnel carrier, and army spokesman Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said government weapons had fallen into the hands of the demonstrators.

The army later retreated, calling for a truce with the demonstrators, who were holding five soldiers hostage. Thousands of protesters remained on the streets at the two main protest sites on Sunday.

“Abhisit must leave Thailand,” Red Shirt leader Veera Musikapong told supporters. “We ask all government officials to stop serving this government.”

The government said an investigation had been launched into the violence, and that negotiations were under way to bring about a resolution to the standoff without more unrest.

The Thomson Reuters news agency said one of its journalists, Japanese cameraman Hiro Muramoto, died after being shot in the chest during the protests.

Tokyo urged Bangkok to investigate the death and ensure the safety of Japanese nationals.

The unrest marked Thailand’s worst political violence since 1992, and the United States urged both sides to show restraint.

The protesters called on the country’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej to intervene to prevent further bloodshed.

“Did anybody inform the king that his children were killed in the middle of the road without justice?” Red Shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan said. “Is there anyone close to him who told him of the gunfights?”

Although he has no official political role, the hospitalised king is seen as a unifying figure. During a 1992 uprising he chastised both the military and protest leaders, effectively bringing the violence to an end.

Thai flags, red roses and incense sticks were placed on pools of blood where protesters were killed or wounded in the Khaosan Road backpacker district, a few yards from a clump of ruined cars with their windows smashed in.

“It’s frightening. We heard explosions, and people were running all around,” said Sharon Aradbasson, a 34-year-old Israeli tourist.

Abhisit offered his condolences over the deaths but refused to bow to the protesters’ calls to resign.

Thaksin, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006 and is now based mainly in Dubai, also offered his condolences to the victims and their families via the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Arrest warrants have been issued for many of the senior Red leaders, but so far none are reported to have been taken into custody. AFP

For Poland, plane crash in Russia rips open old wounds

A firefighter examines wreckage of the plane that carried Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's most prominent military and civilian leaders. (Associated Press / April 10, 2010)

The 97 aboard a Soviet-era plane were heading to Katyn, site of the 1940 massacre of Polish prisoners of war. Now Poland, which never forgot its tragic past, must grieve the loss of its key leaders.

April 10, 2010
By Megan K. Stack
Reporting from Moscow
Los Angeles Times (California, USA)

With a single swipe, the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Saturday gutted a nation's leadership and silenced some of the most potent human symbols of its tragic and tumultuous history.

It was, literally, a nation colliding with its past: They ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

The toll cut a swath through Poland's elite. Along with the president, the 97 dead included the army chief of staff, the head of the National Security Office, the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the deputy parliament speaker, the civil rights commissioner and members of parliament.

But also aboard the plane were war veterans and surviving family members of Poles killed by the Soviets. There was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years. And Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism.

And, of course, Kaczynski himself -- a former Warsaw mayor imprisoned in the 1980s for his opposition to communism.

"The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who called for two minutes of silence at noon Sunday.

Flying on a 26-year-old, Soviet-designed plane, these iconic Polish figures were headed to a Catholic Mass to honor the 70th anniversary of the deaths at Katyn. It was to be a tribute to long-smothered truth.

The massacre was denied for decades by the Soviet Union, and even today, Russian reluctance to open the investigation files on the Polish prisoners remains a deeply sensitive topic between the two countries. To many Poles, the very name Katyn is shorthand for decades of secret grief and impotence in the face of Soviet power.

"I just have this feeling that Katyn is a sort of diabolical place in Polish history," said Tomasz Lis, a prominent Polish journalist and author. "It's just unimaginable; it's horrible."

As the news spread, a shiver of repulsion ran through a shocked country.

"This is unbelievable -- this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on Polish television. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."

The historic freight of the crash was so eerie that it seemed destined for conspiracy theory. Russian officials were careful to vow in the earliest hours to closely involve Poland in the investigation.

Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union during World War II, and lived for decades under Moscow's domination. Long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ties with Russia remain strained by old anxieties over independence.

As the presidential plane, a 26-year-old Tupolev, winged toward the western Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday morning, thick cords of fog wrapped the city. On the ground, air traffic controllers urged the crew to land either in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, or in Moscow rather than risk navigating the fog, Russian officials said.

But time was pressing. The crew decided to risk the landing, and ignored instructions from the air traffic controllers, the Russian air force said.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing," Smolensk region Gov. Sergei Anufriyev told reporters. "Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart. Nobody has survived the disaster."

On the ground, about 1,000 people, many of them Poles, were milling around the memorial site. A Polish priest was to say Catholic Mass once the presidential delegation arrived.

"We were getting ready for the Mass and everybody was expecting the president to arrive any minute," said Yan Rachinsky of Russia's Memorial human rights group. "Suddenly people started talking quietly about something. There were many concerned faces. . . . Soon people started running around and talking to each other. Everybody was wondering what was going on. It was an atmosphere of tension."

The priest led a prayer. Then the Polish ambassador stepped up to break the news. The presidential plane had crashed, he told the crowd. There were no survivors.

"It was a moment of complete shock," Rachinsky said. "We were standing there speechless. We couldn't believe it."

Tears wetting nearly every face, Rachinsky said, the group went ahead with the Mass.

By late afternoon, 97 bodies were being packed into coffins and flown to Moscow for identification. The flight recorders had been found, and investigators were studying them for clues.

In an address shortly after the crash, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was careful to emphasize recent improvements in relations between the two countries.

"These days we conducted memorial events in Katyn together grieving over the victims of totalitarian times," Medvedev said. "All Russians share your grief and mourning."

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Tusk traveled to Katyn to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre. In what was regarded as a turning point in the two countries' often frosty relations, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin also attended the ceremony.

Kaczynski, a frequent and outspoken critic of the Kremlin, was not invited to the ceremony earlier this week.

Unlike Tusk's visit, which was given prominent coverage in Russian media, Kaczynski's plans to attend Saturday's commemoration were all but unmentioned. A few weeks ago, the Russian foreign ministry publicly griped that Kaczynski had not sent official word of his planned visit. The ministry had heard of his arrival from press reports, officials said.

On Saturday, Putin announced that he would personally head the investigation. He rushed to the scene of the crash, where he was to meet again with Tusk.

The crash throws Polish politics into uncertainty. Kaczynski was to run for reelection in October; the vote is now likely to be moved to June.

The leading left-wing candidate, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, was believed to have been aboard the plane. And Polish law calls for another of the candidates, speaker of the lower chamber of parliament Bronislaw Komorowksi, to take over as head of state after the president's death.

Kaczynski, 60, was elected to the presidency in 2005. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, were Soviet-era child actors who grew up to cut a prominent path through Polish politics. Kaczynski rose from the ranks of the Solidarity trade union before falling out bitterly with the group's leader, Lech Walesa, who went on to become the country's first post-Soviet president.

From 2005-2007, in the early years of Kaczynski's presidency, his twin served as prime minister.

The circumstances of Kaczynski's death carry a particular irony because of his long-standing interest in shedding light on some of the more painful moments of Poland's past. As mayor of Warsaw, he championed the construction of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, a tribute to the crushed resistance to the Nazis in 1944.

During his presidency, too, Kaczynski frequently hailed back to the heroic days of Solidarity's struggle against communism.

"Poland needs to reconsider its mistakes," he said in 2005. "But more than that, it needs a consensus based on truth."

megan.stack@latimes.com

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.

Protesters swarm shopping district

Tens of thousands of red-shirt protesters blocked a major intersection in the capital's business centre on Saturday, paralysing traffic and closing shopping malls, as they continued their campaign to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to immediately dissolve the House of Representatives.

Leaders of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) announced their mobile rally plan in the morning at Phan Fa Bridge, saying they would muster at two locations -- Ratchaprasong intersection and Vibhavadi-Rangsit Road.

The first group of protesters was dispatched to set up a stage at the intersection. A few hours later, thousands of red-shirts converged on the Ratchaprasong area, bringing business and traffic to a halt.

Police from Lumpini station tried to negotiate with the protesters, asking them to open one lane for traffic but they refused. Traffic around the intersection was totally blocked before noon.

Large shopping malls in the area closed, including Central World, Gaysorn Plaza, Big C, Siam Centre and Siam Discovery.

Pol Maj Gen Piya Utayo, spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Bureau, said police have received reports that the protesters would stay overnight at the Ratchaprasong intersection.

Police would continue to negotiate with the protesters and ask them to withdraw from the area because there are schools and hospitals in the vicinity.

Red-shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan said this rally coud last for three days. A House dissolution is the least the government could give the protesters, he said, adding that Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuabn had no right to try to negotiate with them to reduce the dissolution timeframe to eight months.

"We cannot let Abhisit rule the country any longer," he told the crowd. "The government has no legitimacy to rule."

The Centre for Administration of Peace and Order (CAPO) estimated there were 60,000 people taking part in the red-shirt protest in the capital on Saturday, spokesman Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

He urged the protesters to listen to police and open routes for traffic and pedestrians.

Col Sansern said CAPO had no plan to crackdown on protesters, provided they remain within the law.

In the morning, a group of people who called themselves "Silent Power" gathered at Rama IX Park in Prawet to voice their opposition to the continuing protest.

They distributed stickers saying, "End the protest. We want a peaceful life." Many of them wore pink shirts and waved Thai flags.

They marched from the park to Seri Centre shopping mall and back to the park. They dispersed afterwards.

Authorities have deployed 50,000 soldiers, police and security personnel in the city to maintain law and order under the provisions of the Internal Security Act.

This photo gallery shows red-shirt protesters at Ratchaprasong intersection on Saturday.