Thai Cabinet to consider lifting emergency decree next week

BANGKOK, March 14 (TNA) - Thailand's National Security Council (NSC) plans to propose the Cabinet, at its weekly meeting next week, to end the imposition of the emergency decree. NSC Secretary-General Lieutenant General Paradorn Pattanatabutr told journalists of the plan on Friday, as the imposition of the executive decree on public administration in emergency situations to cope with anti-government protesters will be in effect in all areas in Bangkok and some areas in nearby provinces until March 22, 2014. Lieutenant General Paradorn acknowledged that security authorities were considering the caretaker government could return to impose the Internal Security Act (ISA) in the same targeted areas and if violence re-occured, the caretaker government could, again, enforce the emergency law. According to the NSC chief, security authorities plan to exercise the ISA until either late April or early May 2014, as the anti-government People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) is expected to continue their movements and there will be an election then. Caretaker Tourism and Sports Minister Somsak Pureesrisak assessed that the end of the emergency decree enforcement would encourage more international tourists to visit Thailand, noting that he has, thus, asked the Thai Consul in Hong Kong to convince authorities of the business island to relieve its severest travel advisory about Thailand, in which local people are prohibited from visiting Thailand. The caretaker minister pointed out that Hong Kong is an important short-haul market of the Thai tourism, with up to 504,000 Hong Kong tourists visiting Thailand alone last year, a 28.7 per cent year-on-year jump. Meanwhile, relatives of two out of six political demonstrators killed at the Pathum Wanaram Temple in Bangkok in a violent crackdown on May 19, 2010 have filed a lawsuit against Abhisit Vejjajiva and Suthep Thaugsuban, then the Democrat prime minister and the deputy prime minister handling demonstrators, accusing both of ordering and conducting premeditated murder of the two demonstrators. The legal action followed the Bangkok South Criminal Court’s ruling that the six victims were killed with bullets of soldiers deployed to cope with protesters at that time, but relatives of the four other killed victims have not taken part in the lawsuit and the case has a 20-year statute of limitations. Suthep is now the anti-government PDRC's core leader.(TNA)