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Reporters Without Borders condemns the use of threats and violence against journalists by anti-government “red shirt” protesters trying to get the press to increase its estimates of the number of participants in the demonstrations they have been staging for days to press Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign.
 
The protests are being led by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, which supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
 
“Red shirt” protesters threw plastic bottles at Channel 3 TV reporter Varunee Suesatsakulchai on 8 April as she was doing a live report from near the Bangkok home of one of the king’s advisers. After being transported from the demonstration, she found herself blocked in the TV station’s vehicle by “red shirts.” Journalists estimated the crowd at 50,000 but the “red shirts” insisted it was twice that.
 
Channel 7 reporter Somphote Thoraksa and his crew, Nation News Agency reporter Sathien Viriyapongsa and Channel 9 crew were also forced by a group of demonstrators to leave the march for allegedly “under-estimating” the size of the demonstration.
 
The Thai Broadcast Journalists Association has condemned the “climate of fear and anxiety among journalists.” The leaders of the “red shirts” have denied any involvement in the violence.
 

Many journalists were attacked by participants in the “yellow shirt” demonstrations at the start of the year.

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