Bangkok defeat won't be end of Red Shirt struggle


The guns are silent, the barricades knocked down, the wounded hospitalized. The defeated Red Shirt complains leaders are in detention, their followers dispersed back to their homes in rural Thailand.

The Red Shirts' once-peaceful street dissents ended in violence and a military crackdown last week, but many believe their movement demanding a change of government is far from finished.

"I think this is a new commencement for the Red Shirts. It will be a darker and grimmer time of struggle and less focused activities.
By no stretch of the imagination is the movement finished," said Kevin Hewison, a Thailand scholar in the University of North Carolina."This is not the end," promised Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a Red Shirt leader. "It will spread further and the situation will deteriorate."