Lim Kimya, 74, refused to flee Cambodia even after former Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened to make life hell for opposition lawmakers.
Lim Kimya, a former member of Cambodia’s National Assembly with the now-exiled opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was killed in the Thai capital, Bangkok, in what former colleagues described as an “assassination”.
According to The Bangkok Post newspaper, 74-year-old Lim Kimya was killed shortly after arriving in the Thai capital by bus from Siem Reap, Cambodia on Tuesday night with his French wife and Cambodian uncle.
The CNRP confirmed the death in a statement, saying it was “shocked and deeply saddened by the news of the brutal and inhumane killing” of Lim Kimye, who served as a CNRP member of parliament in Kampong Thom province.
The former opposition lawmaker, a dual Cambodian and French citizen, reportedly continued to live in Cambodia, although many other former opposition politicians fled, seeking political exile elsewhere in the face of threats from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) under then-Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The once hugely popular CNRP was disbanded in Cambodia and all of its political activities were banned by the Cambodian Supreme Court in 2017. The party still exists as an organization in Cambodian diaspora communities in Australia, the United States and elsewhere. In a statement posted on social media, the CNRP described the killing of Lim Kimye as an “assassination”.
(1/2) Chana Songkhram Police Station in Bangkok has released multiple CCTV images showing the suspect who brazenly shot and killed Lim Kimya, a 74-year-old Cambodian-French political activist.#bangkok #killer #Thailand pic.twitter.com/x2ObMIZob9
— Khaosod English (@KhaosodEnglish) January 8, 2025
“The CNRP strongly condemns this barbaric act, which poses a serious threat to political freedoms,” the statement said, adding that the political party is “closely following the murder case and calls on the Thai authorities to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation.”
Thailand’s Metropolitan Police Bureau is searching for the gunman who fled the scene of the accident on a motorcycle, The Bangkok Post reported.
Human rights groups have called on authorities in Thailand to conduct a swift and thorough investigation.
Human Rights Watch Asia director Elaine Pearson said the “cold-blooded murder” sent a message to Cambodian political activists that “no one is safe, even if they have left Cambodia.”
The cold-blooded killing of a former Cambodian opposition member in central Bangkok sends a chilling message to Cambodian activists that no one is safe, even if they have left Cambodia. https://t.co/x5FUl1PM6M
— Elaine Pearson (@PearsonElaine) January 8, 2025
Phil Robertson, director of Asian Human Rights and Labor Advocates (AHRLA), said the killing had “all the hallmarks of a political assassination”.
“The direct effect will be the severe intimidation of hundreds of Cambodian political opposition figures, NGO activists and human rights defenders who have already fled to Thailand to escape Prime Minister Hun Manet’s campaign of political repression in Cambodia,” Robertson said in a social media post. to the media.
Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet became the new leader of the country replacing his father as Prime Minister in August 2023.
Hun Sen calls for the suppression of Victory Day
The killing of Lim Kimye fell on January 7, an anniversary known as the ruling CPP’s Victory Day, which marks the date when Vietnamese troops, backed by a small contingent of Cambodian soldiers, entered Phnom Penh and toppled Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
Since then, the country has remained under the firm rule of Hun Sen, and now his son, Hun Manet, with little room for political opposition.
At a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the anniversary, Hun Sen called for a new law that would label people who sought to topple his son’s government as “terrorists … who must be brought to justice.”
Although there has been little effective political opposition to the CPP since 1979, this almost changed in 2013, when Lim Kimya was elected as an opposition member of the Cambodian parliament following a general election in which the ruling party was narrowly defeated by the CNRP.
The opposition has capitalized on massive public support for political change after decades of hard-line rule by Hun Sen.
While the CNRP was once seen as the only viable challenger to the CPP and a potential electoral winner, it was disbanded by Cambodia’s politically oriented judicial system in 2017.
Many opposition leaders and supporters have since fled into exile amid a wave of arrests and Hun Sen vowing to make their lives “hell”.
