Why was a Cambodian opposition politician murdered in Bangkok?

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

Next to a well-known temple in Bangkok’s historic royal quarter, a security camera video shows a man parking his motorcycle, removing his helmet so that his face was clearly visible and walking calmly down the street.

A few minutes later shots are heard. Another man falls to the ground.

The killer quickly returns to his motorcycle, appears to knock something over as he does so, and drives away.

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

A police officer attempted to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

“He was brave and had an independent mind,” Monovithya Kem, daughter of CNRP leader Kem Sokha, told the BBC.

“No one except the Cambodian state would have wanted to kill him.”

Lim Kimya had dual Cambodian and French nationality, but decided to stay in Cambodia even after his party was outlawed. The CNRP (Cambodian 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 ruled Cambodia for almost 40 years. before handing it over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.

After its close result in the 2013 election, Hun Sen accused the CNRP of treason, shutting it down and subjecting its members to legal and other harassment. In 2023, Kem Sokha, who had already been under house arrest for six years, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

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

From the 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 is thoroughly investigated is another question.

In recent years, dozens of activists who fled repression in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand have been returned after seeking refuge or, in some cases, have been killed or disappeared. Human rights groups believe there is an unwritten agreement between the four neighboring countries to allow each other’s security forces to pursue dissidents across the border.

Last November, Thailand sent six Cambodian dissidents, along with a young child, back to Cambodia, where they were immediately imprisoned. All were recognized by the United Nations as refugees. Earlier this year, Thailand also sent a Vietnamese Montagnard activist back to Vietnam.

In the past, Thai anti-monarchy activists have been kidnapped and disappeared in Laos, as are widely assumed to be Thai security forces operating outside their own borders. In 2020, a young Thai activist who had fled to Cambodia, Wanchalerm Satsaksit, was kidnapped and disappearedagain the Thai agents assume it.

Cambodian authorities did little to investigate and announced last year that they had closed the case. The same may now happen in Lim Kimya’s case.

“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 exchanged for political and economic favors with their neighboring countries. The growing practice of transnational repression in the Mekong subregion must be stopped in its tracks.”

When Hun Manet, educated in the United States and the United Kingdom, succeeded his father as Cambodia’s prime minister, there was some speculation that he might rule with a lighter hand. But opposition figures continue to be prosecuted and imprisoned, and what little space remained for political dissent has been almost completely closed.

Since his semi-retirement, Hun Sen still plans on the administration of his son; Now he is calling for a new law to brand anyone who tries to replace him as a terrorist.

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