BANGKOK
The Thai junta has relaxed an order banning ousted former premier Yingluck Shinawatra from travelling overseas, giving permisson for her to leave the country for the first time since the May 22 coup.
Army spokesman Col. Winthai Suvaree said Thursday that the junta's National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) had approved a written request for her to visit Europe.
The Bangkok Post reported that observers expected Yingluck to also attend a 65th birthday party for her elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra in France on July 26.
Ex-premier Thaksin was deposed in a coup in 2006, and then fled in 2008 after being charged with corruption. He is now living in exile, mostly in Dubai, but also regularly visits Europe.
Yingluck has not been allowed to leave Thailand since May 23, when the junta summoned prominent figures from both sides of the kingdom's political divide, and then banned 155 of them from leaving the country without permission.
The NCPO also abrogated the constitution and the senate, and banned all opposition and criticism of the junta’s orders. Hundreds of politicians, activists, academics and journalists have since been summoned and detained in military camps; most of them released after the seven-day detention period allowed by martial law.
Col. Suvaree said Thursday that Yingluck had cooperated with the junta since her release, while complying with an order not to engage in political activities.
Thailand's political crisis began in November when Yingluck faced a wave of opposition protests when her government pushed through an amnesty that would have lifted the 2008 corruption conviction against her brother. Confronted by massive demonstrations, the government withdrew the bill, but the opposition alleged corruption by the government and Shinawatra family.
Yingluck dissolved the parliament December 9 and called February 2 elections, which were disrupted by the anti-government movement -- the People’s Democratic Reform Committee -- who want an unelected "people’s council" to run Thailand until the political system is reformed.
She was then herself removed by the Constitutional Court on May 7 in relation to the transfer of a high-ranking civil servant in 2011.
Yingluck is still facing charges of dereliction of duty with regard to her overseeing of a rice subsidy program that was riddled with corruption and caused massive financial losses to the country.
www.aa.com.tr/en
