Teaching them young - children of the red shirt movement play with toy
guns during the fund-raising rally in Pattaya.
Phasakorn Channgam
About 500 supporters of the “red shirt”
anti-government movement welcomed 20 red bicyclists from Bangkok, sang
songs and listened to a call-in speech from a fugitive leader during a
fund-raising rally in Pattaya.
The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship’s
“Pattaya Love” chapter organized the Jan. 10 event to welcome the “Two
Legs for Democracy Team,” a group of red shirt cyclists who biked from
Bangkok to raise funds for the struggling movement.
Local red shirts followed the bikers down North Road,
along Beach Road to Walking Street and up to Soi Khopai, where they
joined the rally stage at Khum Thappraya.
Speeches started with calls for the government to
suspend taxes on liquid petroleum gas and freeze its price. While
there’s nothing the Thai government can do about rising international
oil prices, the red shirts are using the increase as an excuse to grouse
about taxes.
Later the demonstrators joined in song and general
anti-Democrat Party speeches before stopping to hear a call-in speech
from leader Jakrapob Penkair, who launched the violent “Red Siam”
splinter group and fled for self-exile overseas in 2010 after being
charged with lese majeste.
