Amnesty International has cancelled the public launch of a report on torture in Thailand after police in Bangkok warned the rights group that its representatives might be arrested and prosecuted for visa violations. The report accuses Thai soldiers and police of torture, including of suspected insurgents, government opponents, alleged drug users, and minorities. The London-based advocacy group had flown in members of its UK team for the event, which was to be held at a hotel in central Bangkok and attended by diplomats, journalists and local human rights activists. Members of Thailand's police special branch and the department of employment had also turned up. Amnesty said it had been in close contact with the government in the weeks before the launch but it was informed on Wednesday that its foreign staff - the authors of the report - had the wrong visas. An hour after the press conference was due to start, Nadthasiri Bergman, a Thai legal adviser to Amnesty, said the authorities "insist that they are not closing the event down, but they qualify that if representatives of Amnesty International speak there will be consequences and they will subject to arrest and prosecuted under Thai labour law". Despite the alleged threats, Yuval Gimbar, who researched the report, spoke to media in the hotel lobby by the lifts, 20 metres from where the event was due to be held. "We know that the Thai government does not accept criticism very well," he said. "[But] In the 21st century you can't really shut people up. You can try. I think what they did probably gave us more voice then if they had let us exercise peacefully our human right to freedom of expression." The report, titled "Make Him Speak by Tomorrow": Torture and Other Ill-Treatment in Thailand, documents 74 alleged cases of torture and other ill-treatment including beatings, strangling by hand or rope, waterboarding and forms of humiliation. Amnesty accuses the ruling junta of allowing a culture of torture to flourish across the country since a coup in 2014. The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report or event cancellation. The report quoted several people, including one man who said the army held him at an undisclosed location for seven days, the period that the military is allowed to detain people under new laws. "They put a plastic bag on my head until I fainted, and then poured a bucket of cold water on me," he was quoted as saying. "They applied electro-shock to my penis and chest. I was restrained, my legs tied, and my face covered with tape and a plastic bag." Thailand is preparing a draft law that would criminalise torture and enforced disappearance. Laurent Meillan, acting regional representative of the UN human rights office in south-east Asia, said he regretted the decision to prevent the public launch, which he said raised serious questions. "This incident is another striking illustration of a new pattern of harassment of human rights defenders documenting torture in Thailand," he said.