By SETH MYDANS
Published: May 3, 2011
BANGKOK — A year after the bloody suppression of antigovernment protests in Bangkok, no government official has yet been charged with a crime related to the deaths of about 90 people, including medical workers and others who were apparently the deliberate targets of sniper fire, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.
At a news conference here, the New York-based group’s Asia director, Brad Adams, displayed video clips that he said showed at least one sniper in military uniform, as well as figures on an elevated train track, whose presence he said contradicted the government assertions that no soldiers had been deployed there.
The use of snipers has been one of the contentious elements of debate over the events that convulsed Bangkok with violence. The government has insisted that it did not deploy snipers.
But the report said Human Rights Watch had gathered evidence that “several unarmed protesters, medical volunteers and bystanders were killed with single shots to the head, suggesting the use of snipers and high-powered scopes.”
There was no immediate government response to the Human Rights Watch report. The government has announced its own investigations into the violence, but has not yet issued a final report.
In April and May last year, hundreds of thousands of “red shirt” protesters occupied parts of Bangkok, demanding that the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva step down. The protests were crushed in a military offensive on May 19.
“In plain view, government forces shot protesters and armed militants shot soldiers, but no one has been held responsible,” Mr. Adams said.
“Those who were killed and wounded deserve better than this,” he said. “The government should ensure that all those who committed violence and abuses, on both sides, are investigated and prosecuted.”
Mr. Abhisit is expected to dissolve Parliament soon, paving the way for an election in the coming weeks. The social and political divide between the country’s elite establishment and its poorer urban and rural population appears to be as deep as ever, and both the governing party and its opponents are likely to use their versions of the events of last year in their campaigns.
At the news conference, Mr. Adams questioned how much control Mr. Abhisit had over the armed forces, whose backing was crucial to his gaining and keeping office.
“For a long time, the question has been not whether he is willing but whether he is able to assert government control over the military,” Mr. Adams said. “The evidence has been increasingly pointing to the fact that the civilian government does not control the military.”
The 139-page report, “Descent Into Chaos: Thailand’s 2010 Red Shirt Protests and the Government Crackdown,” is based on 94 interviews with victims, witnesses, protesters, security forces, police officers and others, most of whom Mr. Adams said had not been interviewed by government investigators.
“Bangkok was not a theater of war,” Mr. Adams said, even if some protesters were armed. “It was an area of severe civil disobedience.”
The high toll of deaths and injuries was caused in part by the military’s using lethal force unnecessarily, including high-powered weapons and snipers, the report said.
It noted that soldiers were also among the dead and wounded, and that there was evidence that protest leaders had been aligned with mysterious “black shirt” gunmen who were apparently responsible for some of the violence.
Mr. Adams said 26 civilians and 4 soldiers were killed in the first and possibly most violent encounter of the protests, on April 10.
Human Rights Watch asserted that soldiers had shot and killed at least four people, including a volunteer medic who was treating the wounded, in or near the Pathum Wanaram temple, where thousands of protesters sought refuge after their leaders surrendered to the authorities.
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