Things will be different from previous commemorations of the May 19, 2010 crackdown when red shirts gather on Monday to remember the violence at Ratchaprasong and pay respects to the Italian photographer who was shot dead.
The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) is organising the fourth commemoration of the incident that saw more than 90 people killed and thousands injured. But it will not be held at Ratchaprasong intersection. Instead the remembrance is being moved to Aksa Road in suburban Bangkok where about 10,000 red-shirt supporters have camped since May 10.
The pro-government red-shirt supporters are not prepared to move from the site for fear of being used to invoke military intervention after the anti-government People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) has laid siege to Bangkok for six months.
This year Elisabetta Polenghi, Italian photographer and younger sister of Fabio Polenghi, who was killed on May 19, 2010, will not be there to lay flowers on Ratchadamri Road as she has done for the past three years.
Elisabetta Polenghi examines photos of her brother Fabio who was shot dead on May 19, 2010. (Photo by Achara Ashayagachat)
On April 28 at the age of 50, Elisabetta passed away from pancreatic cancer in a Milan hospital.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT), however, will issue a statement to remember Fabio, who had been a familiar face in Thailand for many years. A few Bangkok-based journalists who knew him and were on the scene that day will post a video of Elisabetta talking about her quest for truth about her brother's death.
In her determined quest for justice for her brother, Elisabetta got passionately involved with the families of those who were killed in the April-May violence and other political prisoners. This year, the red-shirts will also remember the brother and sister as one of their heroes.
In May last year, the Southern Bangkok Criminal Court ruled in an inquest that her brother, then 48, had been shot by a bullet coming from the direction of the army on Ratchadamri Road.
An inquest into the death of Japanese Reuters cameraman Hiroyuki Muramoto, who was shot on April 10, 2010, will not finish until early next month.
Phayao Akhad, mother of the volunteer nurse Kamonked Akhad who was shot in Pathum Wanaram temple on the same day that Fabio was killed, will still hold religious rites for her daughter in the morning at the temple before joining the red shirts at Aksa Road.
"The only thing that we want to see is Thailand’s recognition of jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) so that no more people get killed by the authorities and received no justice," said Ms Payao.
Ms Payao and others who lost a family member protested against the Pheu Thai-sponsored wholesale amnesty bill in October last year. She is disappointed at the chaos that has since ensued.
"We don’t want to see anyone injured and killed anymore. We don’t want to see those who think differently light more fires and ignite hatred against each other. Whichever colour, we are still Thai people," pleaded Ms Payao, insisting that ICC recognition would help protect all sides.
She said while waiting for ICC recognition, she was still pursuing criminal lawsuits against the military and the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, thanks to the August inquest ruling that her daughter was killed by soldiers.
Many other red-shirt sympathisers who were attending the May 19 memorial share similar feelings of bitterness and dismay that Thailand is going downhill due to the protracted political conflict.
A middle-management civil servant of the Interior Ministry who only gave her nickname Jay, said this year commemorations would be bitter as injustice has not yet been rectified and the looming economic recession will hit grass-roots people and small-medium enterprises.
“We fought against the 2006 coup. The April 10, 2010 dispersal reminded us of the military crackdown in 1992. It has been too much for us. I was a district chief assistant in a central province and felt obliged to meet folks from the province who came to Bangkok to seek a re-election,” she said.
Her party of choice did not meet her expectations and the last straw was the amnesty bill, yet she did not join the PDRC because it was Suthep Thaugsuban, then deputy prime minister, who ordered the fatal crackdown against the people.
“I just wish prisoners who remain in jail after the 2010 can be released. The core leaders from whatever colour are always let loose while rank and file or even by-standers have to face imprisonment,” Ms Jay said.