CMPO:Security teams handle protests based on int’l norms

BANGKOK, January 28 (TNA) - The Center for Maintaining Peace and Order (CMPO) says that the caretaker government's security teams will remain handling demonstrators based on international norms with transparency and no violence-prone conditions. Royal Thai Police Deputy Spokesman Police Major General Anucha Romyanan told journalists of the CMPO's policy on Tuesday, explaining that under the policy, Thai police, soldiers and civilians under the supervision of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) work together to gather intelligence, as well as report on and monitor updates, while officials of the Ministry of Interior's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation remain on standby for an immediate operational response whenever they are ordered. Police Major General Anucha said that the CMPO's combined security force has been assigned to jointly work to maintain peace and order in compliance with the emergency decree, having enforced for 60 days in Bangkok and some targeted areas in its peripheral provinces since January 22, and international procedures, covering international human rights principles. The deputy spokesman stressed that the combined force will keep employing transparent security measures without creating any violence-prone condition. According to the deputy spokesman, the combined security force has also been prepared for protecting restricted areas, important sites and even public utility systems when handling any confrontation between groups of people with different ideas, in parallel with rendering assistance to those affected by any violent incident and their operations to defend important places and to deal with any sabotage or riot. Meanwhile, two anti-government protesters were shot by unidentified gunmen outside the Thai Army Club on Bangkok's Vibhavadi Rangsit Road on Tuesday afternoon, shortly before Caretaker Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra met with the five-member Election Commission of Thailand (EC) at the venue to discuss on whether the new general election should be postponed from February 2, 2014 as scheduled earlier, amid persistent street protests aimed to push for a domestic political reform prior to the new general election. Both of the injured protesters were then sent to nearby hospitals, Ramathibodi and Rajavithi Hospitals, while the caretaker prime minister-EC meeting was continued as scheduled with results expected to be announced by Tuesday evening. Latest reports said the caretaker government and the EC resolved at the meeting that the new national poll be maintained on February 2 as earlier scheduled.(TNA)