It had all the marks of a cold-blooded, expert execution.
Second to a well-known church in Bangkok’s ancient royal third a person is seen on a security camera video parking his motorbike, removing his helmet, so that his face was plainly visible, and walking quietly across the road.
A few seconds later, photographs start to sound. Another person falls to the ground.
The assassin quickly returns to his motorcycle, appears to put something away as he does, and pulls out.
The victim was Lim Kimya, a 73-year-old former parliamentarian from the main Cambodian opposition party, the CNRP, which was banned in 2017. He had been hit in the chest by two bullets, according to the Thai police. He had just arrived in Bangkok with his wife on a bus from Cambodia.
He was attempted to revive by a police officer, but he was found dead on the field.
” He was gutsy, with an impartial thinking”, Monovithya Kem, daughter of the CNRP head Kem Sokha, told the BBC.
The Thai state, according to him, “would have wanted to kill him.”
Lim Kimya had dual Cambodian and French nationality, but chose to stay in Cambodia even after his party was outlawed. The CNRP – Cambodia National Rescue Party – was an amalgamation of two earlier opposition parties, and in 2013 came close to defeating the party of Hun Sen, the self-styled “strongman” who ruled Cambodia for nearly 40 years before handing over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.
HunSen’s close call in the 2013 election resulted in the CNRP being accused of treason, shutting it down, and harassing its members in various ways. In 2023 Kem Sokha, who had already spent six years under house arrest, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
High-level political assassinations, though not unknown, are relatively rare in Cambodia; in 2016 a popular critic of Hun Sen, Kem Ley, was gunned down in Phnom Penh and in 2012 environmental activist Chut Wutty was also murdered.
The Thai authorities have already identified Lim Kimya’s criminal as an ex-Thai army officer who is currently employed as a bicycle taxi drivers from the security cameras videos. Finding him should not be difficult.
Whether the killing is fully investigated, though, is another matter.
In recent years dozens of activists fleeing repression in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand have been sent back after seeking sanctuary, or in some cases have been killed or disappeared. Human rights organizations think there is an unwritten agreement between the four neighboring nations that allows each other’s security forces to pursue dissidents across the border.
Last November Thailand sent six Cambodian dissidents, together with a young child, back to Cambodia, where they were immediately jailed. All were categorized as refugees by the UN. A Vietnamese Montagnard activist was also sent back to Vietnam earlier in the year.
In the past Thai anti-monarchy activists have been abducted and disappeared in Laos, it is widely presumed by Thai security forces operating outside their own borders. In 2020 a young Thai activist who had fled to Cambodia, Wanchalerm Satsaksit, was abducted and disappeared, again it is assumed by Thai operatives.
The Cambodian authorities made little effort to look into the case last year and announced they had closed the case. In the case of Lim Kimya, it’s possible that the same thing will happen.
” Thailand has presided over a de facto’ swap arrangement'”, says Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates in Thailand.
Dissidents and refugees are exchanged for political and economic benefits with its neighbors. The Mekong sub-region’s growing transnational repression needs to be stopped.
There was some rumors about whether Hun Manet, the father of Hun Manet, would lead Cambodia as prime minister with a lighter hand. However, opposition figures are still facing charges and serving sentences, and what little room was left over political dissention has been almost entirely closed.
From his semi-retirement the figure of Hun Sen still hovers over his son’s administration, he is now calling for a new law to brand anyone trying to replace him as a terrorist.
Thailand will now face pressure from the UN Human Rights Council to demonstrate that it can bring those responsible for such a brutal assassination on the streets of its capital to justice. It lobbied hard for, and won, a seat on the council this year.