Why was the Cambodian opposition politician killed in Bangkok?

It had all the hallmarks of cold-blooded professional murder.

Next to a famous temple in Bangkok’s historic royal quarter, CCTV shows a man parking his motorcycle, removing his helmet so his face is clearly visible, and calmly crossing the road.

After a few minutes, shots are heard. Another man falls to the ground.

The killer quickly returns to his motorcycle, allegedly throwing something away, and drives off.

The victim was Lim Kimya, a 73-year-old former parliamentarian from Cambodia’s main opposition party. CNRP, which was banned in 2017. According to Thai police, he was hit by two bullets in the chest. He had just arrived in Bangkok with his wife by bus from Cambodia.

A police officer tried to resuscitate him, but he died at the scene.

“He was courageous, with an independent mind,” Monavia Kem, daughter of CNRP leader Kem Sokha, told the BBC.

“No one but the Cambodian state would want to kill him.”

Lim Kimya held dual Cambodian and French citizenship but chose to remain in Cambodia even after his party was outlawed. The CNRP – the 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-styled “strongman” who has ruled Cambodia for nearly 40 years. before handing over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.

After his careful performance in the 2013 election, Hun Sen accused the CNRP of treason, shutting it down and subjecting its members to legal and other forms of persecution. In 2023, Kem Soho, who had already spent six years under house arrest, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

High-level political assassinations, while not unknown, are relatively rare in Cambodia; in 2016, a popular critic of Hun Sen, Kem Ley, was killed in Phnom Penh, and in 2012, an environmental activist Chat Wooti was also killed.

According to surveillance video, Thai police have already identified the killer, Lim Kimya, as a former Thai Navy officer who now works as a motorcycle taxi driver. It will not be difficult to find it.

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 sent back to seek asylum, or in some cases have been killed or disappeared. Rights groups believe there is an unwritten agreement between the four neighboring countries that allows each other’s security forces to harass dissidents across the border.

Last November, Thailand sent six Cambodian dissidents and a young child back to Cambodia, where they were promptly jailed. All of them were recognized by the UN as refugees. Earlier this year, Thailand also sent a Vietnamese mountaineer activist to Vietnam.

In the past, Thai anti-monarchy activists have been abducted and disappeared in Laos, with Thai security forces widely believed to be operating outside their own borders. In 2020, a young Thai activist who fled to Cambodia, Vanchalerm Satsaxit, was kidnapped and disappearedagain, Thai operatives suggest.

Cambodian authorities did little to investigate and last year announced the closure of the case. It is possible that the same will happen in the case of Lim Kimya.

“Thailand was de facto running the ‘swap arrangement,'” says Phil Robertson, Thailand director of the Asian Human Rights and Labor Organization.

“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 immediately.”

When U.S.- and British-educated Hun Mane succeeded his father as Cambodia’s prime minister, there was some speculation about whether he might rule with a lighter hand. But opposition figures continue to be persecuted and thrown into prison, and the little space left for political dissent has been almost completely closed.

In his semi-retirement, Hun Sen’s figure still looms over his son’s administration; now he’s calling for new legislation to brand anyone who tries to replace him as terrorists.

Thailand, which lobbied hard for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council this year, will now be under pressure to show it can bring to justice those behind such brazen killing on the streets of its capital.