EPA
Lim Kimya was hit in the chest by two bullets in Bangkok’s Royal District
This had all the hallmarks of a professional, cold-blooded assassination.
Next to a famous temple in Bangkok’s historic Royal District, a security camera shows a man parking his motorcycle, removing his helmet so his face is clearly visible, and calmly crossing the road.
A few minutes later, gunshots are heard. Another man falls to the ground.
The assassin quickly returns to his motorcycle, appearing to throw something as he does, and drives off.
The victim was Lim Kimya, a 73-year-old former parliamentarian from Cambodia’s main opposition party, the CNRP, banned in 2017. He was hit in the chest by two bullets, according to Thai police. He had just arrived in Bangkok with his wife on a bus from Cambodia.
A police officer tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“He was courageous, with an independent spirit,” Monovithya Kem, daughter of CNRP leader Kem Sokha, told the BBC.
“No one other than the Cambodian state would have wanted to kill him.”
AFP
Lim Kimya, pictured in 2017, chose to stay in Cambodia even after his party was banned
Lim Kimya had dual Cambodian and French citizenship, but chose to stay in Cambodia even after his party was banned. The CNRP – Cambodia National Rescue Party – was a merger of two previous opposition parties and, in 2013, came close to defeating the party of Hun Sen, the self-proclaimed “strongman” who ruled Cambodia for almost 40 years before handing over to his son. Hun Manet in 2023.
After his narrow victory in the 2013 elections, Hun Sen accused the CNRP of treason, shutting it down and subjecting its members to harassment, including legal harassment. In 2023, Kem Sokha, who had already spent six years under house arrest, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
High-level political assassinations, while not unheard of, are relatively rare in Cambodia; in 2016, a popular critic of Hun Sen, Kem Ley, was shot dead in Phnom Penh and in 2012, environmental activist Chut Wutty was also assassinated.
Through security camera video, Thai police have already identified Lim Kimya’s killer as a former Thai navy officer, who now works as a motorcycle taxi driver. Finding it shouldn’t be difficult.
However, whether the murder will be fully investigated is another matter.
In recent years, dozens of activists fleeing repression in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand have been returned after seeking refuge or, in some cases, killed or disappeared. Human rights groups believe there is an unwritten agreement between the four neighboring countries authorizing their respective security forces to pursue dissidents across the border.
Last November, Thailand returned six Cambodian dissidents, along with a young child, to Cambodia, where they were immediately imprisoned. All were recognized by the United Nations as refugees. Earlier this year, Thailand also returned a Vietnamese highlander activist to Vietnam.
In the past, Thai anti-monarchy activists have been kidnapped and disappeared in Laos, widely believed to be by Thai security forces operating outside their own borders. In 2020, a young Thai activist who had fled to Cambodia, Wanchalerm Satsaksit, was kidnapped and disappeared, as Thai agents once again assume.
Cambodian authorities did not investigate and announced last year that they had closed the case. It is possible that the same thing will now happen in the case of Lim Kimya.
“Thailand has presided over a de facto ‘swap deal,'” says Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates in Thailand.
“Dissidents and refugees are traded for political and economic favors with neighboring countries. The growing practice of transnational repression in the Mekong sub-region must be stopped in its tracks.”
When the US- and UK-educated Hun Manet succeeded his father as Cambodia’s prime minister, there was speculation about whether he might rule with a lighter hand. But opposition figures are still being prosecuted and imprisoned, and what little space remained for political dissent has been almost entirely closed off.
Since his semi-retirement, the figure of Hun Sen still looms over his son’s administration; he is now calling for a new law to label anyone who tries to replace him as a terrorist.
Thailand, which lobbied for and won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council this year, will now be under pressure to show it can bring to justice those responsible for such a brazen street killing of its capital.
