A pair of high-profile attacks charged that the military regime uses excessive legal action to suppress and intimidate civil society and peaceful critics.
A special 30-page report by Amnesty International, "They Cannot Keep Us Quiet" was officially published on Wednesday. It is sub-titled "The criminalization of activists, human rights defenders and others in Thailand."
"Thai authorities are waging a campaign to criminalise and punish dissent by targeting civil society and political activists who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and assembly," the Amnesty report said.
It can be read or downloaded from the Amnesty International website.
It was released hours after David Kaye, a US ex-professor and now the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, held meetings on Tuesday and then launched a scathing attack on what he called misuse of laws prohibiting defamation of the monarchy.
"The lese-majeste provision of the Thai Criminal Code is incompatible with international human rights law," Mr Kaye said at a media briefing.
"Lese-majeste provisions have no place in a democratic country. I urge the authorities of Thailand to take steps to revise the country’s Criminal Code and to repeal the law that establishes a justification for criminal prosecution."
Amnesty International was equally critical of what the two foreign critics called misuse of Section 112 of the Penal Code, or lese majeste.
Read the full story at BangkokPost