Reports: Thailand bars online contact with monarchy critics

BANGKOK – Media reports in Thailand say authorities have declared it illegal to exchange information on the internet with three prominent government critics who often write about the country’s monarchy.

A letter from the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society reported online Wednesday by the newspaper Thai Rath and other media requested all citizens not to follow, contact, share or engage in any other activity that would result in sharing information from historian Somsak Jeamteerasakul, former diplomat Pavin Chachavalpongpun and online journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall. All three live outside Thailand.

The letter says people who spread such information, directly or indirectly, could be violating the country’s Computer Crime Act, even unintentionally.

Thailand enforces a law that punishes with three to 15 years imprisonment the dissemination of information considered insulting to the monarchy.