Anti-smoking activists and students assembled in Bangkok’s convention center to protest the tobacco industry’s TABINFO Asia 2009 event.

They’re calling for the Thai government to take strong action on tobacco regulations.

They wore fancy costumes and carried placards condemning cigarette manufacturers for killing people.

[Dr. Mary Assunta, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance]:
"Governments of Asia should implement the global treaty on tobacco control and that means to ban all tobacco advertising and sponsorship, to make sure that cigarette packs have got prominent graphic warnings, to increase tobacco tax and also to ensure that public places are a 100 per cent smoke-free. Now these steps that I have mentioned are actually not the same objectives as TABINFO Asia. And we want to get this message across to governments.”

The protesters say the meeting aims to create new strategies to turn more Asians into addicted smokers.

The three-day event is focused on new marketing strategies to expand its markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

The anti-smoking group claims that almost two-and-a-half million Asians died because of smoking. China is the biggest tobacco consumer.