Cambodia deploys 4,500 police for Thaksin’s safety: Red Shirt leader [Hun Sen wasted taxpayers' money to protect a foreign fugitive, $20 free entry]

"Thaksin’s fans will also be granted free entry to the Angkor temple complex during their stay, both officials said. A standard day pass to the country’s most popular tourist attraction costs $20."

BANGKOK, April 12 (MCOT)– A key leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), Thailand’s Red Shirt movement, said Thursday that more than 4,000 Cambodian police will be deployed to ensure the safety of Thailand's ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra who will visit the country this week.

UDD key leader Jatuporn Prompan, also a Pheu Thai party-list MP, said the Cambodian government will step up security measures at venues where the ex-Thai premier will visit during the Songkran Festival with 4,000 police officers and 500 plainclothes police being deployed.

Mr Jatuporn added that a number of Red Shirt guards will also join the security operations with the Cambodian officers.

He said that the Red Shirt supporters will cross the border into Cambodia beginning Saturday April 14 to join the water-pouring ceremony to ask a blessing from Mr Thaksin on the Thai New Year. He asked the red-clad festival-goers to enter the neighbouring country legally.

The venue of the water-pouring ceremony will be under tightened security, said Mr Jatuporn, adding that Cambodian officials will maintain highest security at all its entrances and exits.

Mr Thaksin, who is now in the neighbouring country Laos, earlier claimed that he had been under threat of his life four times.

On Wednesday, his arrival destination was changed without prior notice from Vientiane’s Wattay International Airport where a number of his supporters gathered to an army airport elsewhere for security concerns.

The fugitive ex-premier is scheduled to leave Pakse in the Lao PDR’s Champasak province for Siem Riep, Cambodia, on Saturday.

On Thursday, a 40 bus UDD caravan left Nong Khai across the Friendship Bridge for Vientiane for a water-pouring ceremony with their leader.

It is reported that the Lao authorities asked the UDD supporters not to wear red outfits and that only one thousand were allowed to meet with Mr Thaksin at Phra That Luang in Vientiane due to security concerns. (MCOT online news)
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Cambodia deploys huge security for Thaksin rally

AFP
Thursday, Apr 12, 2012

PHNOM PENH - Cambodia will deploy thousands of security personnel to police a mass rally for ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra this weekend, officials said Thursday.

Thaksin, a deeply divisive figure in neighbouring Thailand who lives abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption, is set to address tens of thousands of his “Red Shirt” supporters on Saturday in northwestern Siem Reap province.

Phnom Penh said it will foot the bill to provide crowd control and protection for the former Thai leader, who has strong links to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

“We have a duty to provide security for Thai people and for Thaksin,” national police spokesman Kirt Chantharith told AFP.

He said there was no specific threat to anyone’s safety, but noted that the Red Shirts had a long-standing rivalry with Thai political opponents.

“This is a huge and historical event,” he said. “Many thousands of security forces will be in place,” including national police, military police, soldiers and bodyguards.

Mass rallies by Thaksin’s supporters in the Thai capital in 2010 descended into the kingdom’s worst political violence in decades, with more than 90 people – mostly civilians – killed in a military crackdown.

Thaksin remains a much-loved figure for many poor Thais, but is hated by much of the Bangkok-based elite in military, palace and bureaucratic circles who see him as autocratic and a threat to the monarchy.

The former tycoon, whose sister Yingluck became prime minister in Thailand last year, told the Red Shirts via a video address from neighbouring Laos on Wednesday that he expects to set foot in Thailand again this year.

Tep Bunchhay, the governor of Siem Reap town, best known as the gateway to Cambodia’s famed temples, told AFP by telephone that authorities had prepared a large campsite for the visitors.

He confirmed that Phnom Penh would take care of those expenses as well, though he expected “some of it” might be paid back by Thailand’s ruling Puea Thai Party.

Thaksin’s fans will also be granted free entry to the Angkor temple complex during their stay, both officials said. A standard day pass to the country’s most popular tourist attraction costs $20.

Cambodia and Thailand traded heavy arms fire over a disputed border in early 2011 under the previous Thai government. But ties have warmed significantly since Yingluck took power, largely thanks to her brother whom Hun Sen has called an “eternal friend”.