Lim Kimya, 74, had refused to flee Cambodia even after former PM Hun Sen threatened to make opposition MPs lives ‘hell’.
Lim Kimya, a former member of Cambodia’s Nationwide Meeting with the now-exiled opposition Cambodia Nationwide Rescue Get together (CNRP), has been shot in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, in an assault labelled an “assassination” by former colleagues.
In response to The Bangkok Put up newspaper, 74-year-old Lim Kimya was shot lifeless quickly after he arrived within the Thai capital on a bus from Siem Reap, Cambodia, on Tuesday night together with his French spouse and Cambodian uncle.
The CNRP confirmed the dying in an announcement, saying it was “shocked and deeply saddened by the information of the brutal and inhumane taking pictures” of Lim Kimya, who had served because the CNRP’s member of parliament for Kampong Thom province.
The previous opposition MP, a twin Cambodian and French nationwide, had reportedly continued to dwell in Cambodia, at the same time as many different former opposition politicians fled, in search of political exile elsewhere within the face of threats from the governing Cambodian Folks’s Get together (CPP) underneath then-Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The as soon as massively standard CNRP was dissolved in Cambodia and all its political actions banned by Cambodia’s Supreme Court docket in 2017. The celebration nonetheless exists as an organisation in Cambodian diaspora communities in Australia, america and elsewhere. In an announcement shared on social media, the CNRP described Lim Kimya’s killing as an “assassination”.
(1/2) Bangkok’s Chana Songkhram Police Station has launched extra CCTV footages displaying a suspect who openly shot and killed Lim Kimya, a 74-year-old Cambodian-French political activist.#bangkok #murderer #thailand pic.twitter.com/x2ObMIZob9
— Khaosod English (@KhaosodEnglish) January 8, 2025
“The CNRP strongly condemns this barbaric act, which is a severe menace to political freedom”, the assertion mentioned, including that the political celebration is “carefully following the homicide case and calls on the Thai authorities to conduct an intensive and neutral investigation”.
Thailand’s Metropolitan Police Bureau is looking for a gunman who fled the scene on a motorcycle, The Bangkok Put up reported.
Human rights teams have referred to as on authorities in Thailand to conduct a swift and thorough investigation.
Human Rights Watch’s Asia Director Elaine Pearson mentioned the “cold-blooded killing” despatched a message to Cambodian political activists that “nobody is secure, even when they’ve left Cambodia”.
The cold-blooded killing of a former Cambodian opposition member in downtown Bangkok sends a chilling message to Cambodian activists that nobody is secure, even when they’ve left Cambodia. https://t.co/x5FUl1PM6M
— Elaine Pearson (@PearsonElaine) January 8, 2025
Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA), mentioned the killing had “all of the hallmarks of a political assassination”.
“The direct affect might be to severely intimidate the a whole bunch of Cambodian political opposition figures, NGO activists, and human rights defenders who’ve already fled to Thailand to flee PM Hun Manet’s marketing campaign of political repression in Cambodia,” Robertson mentioned in a put up on social media.
Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet turned the nation’s new chief by changing his father as prime minister in August 2023.
Hun Sen requires crackdown on Victory Day
Lim Kimya’s killing fell on January 7, the anniversary generally known as Victory Day for the governing CPP, which marks the date that Vietnamese troops, supported by a small contingent of Cambodian troopers, entered Phnom Penh and toppled Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
Since then, the nation has remained underneath the iron-fisted 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 referred to as for a brand new regulation to model individuals who wished to overthrow his son’s authorities as “terrorists… who have to be dropped at justice”.
Whereas there was little efficient political opposition to the CPP since 1979, that nearly modified in 2013, the yr that Lim Kimya was elected as an opposition member of Cambodia’s parliament following a common election during which the governing celebration was nearly defeated by the CNRP.
The opposition had tapped right into a groundswell of standard help for political change after many years of hardline rule by Hun Sen.
Whereas the CNRP was as soon as thought of the only real viable opponent to the CPP and a possible election winner, it was dissolved by Cambodia’s politically-aligned judicial system in 2017.
Many opposition leaders and supporters have since fled into exile amid a wave of arrests and Hun Sen, promising to make their lives “hell”.
