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 National Assembly with the now-exiled opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), has been shot in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, in an attack labelled an “assassination” by former colleagues.

According to The Bangkok Post newspaper, 74-year-old Lim Kimya was shot dead soon after he arrived in the Thai capital on a bus from Siem Reap, Cambodia, on Tuesday evening 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 shooting” of Lim Kimya, who had served as the CNRP’s member of parliament for Kampong Thom province.

The former opposition MP, a dual Cambodian and French national, had reportedly continued to live in Cambodia, even as many other former opposition politicians fled, seeking political exile elsewhere in the face of threats from the governing Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) under then-Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The once hugely popular CNRP was dissolved in Cambodia and all its political activities banned by Cambodia’s Supreme Court in 2017. The party still exists as an organisation in Cambodian diaspora communities in Australia, the United States and elsewhere. In a statement shared on social media, the CNRP described Lim Kimya’s killing as an “assassination”.

(1/2) Bangkok’s Chana Songkhram Police Station has released more CCTV footages showing a suspect who brazenly shot and killed Lim Kimya, a 74-year-old Cambodian-French political activist.#bangkok #assassin #thailand pic.twitter.com/x2ObMIZob9

— Khaosod English (@KhaosodEnglish) January 8, 2025

“The CNRP strongly condemns this barbaric act, which is a serious threat to political freedom”, 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 a gunman who fled the scene on a motorbike, The Bangkok Post reported.

Human rights groups have called on authorities in Thailand to conduct a swift and thorough investigation.

Human Rights Watch’s Asia Director Elaine Pearson said the “cold-blooded killing” 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 downtown 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 the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA), said the killing had “all the hallmarks of a political assassination”.

“The direct impact will be to severely intimidate the hundreds of Cambodian political opposition figures, NGO activists, and human rights defenders who have already fled to Thailand to escape PM Hun Manet’s campaign of political repression in Cambodia,” Robertson said in a post on social media.

Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet became the country’s new leader by replacing his father as prime minister in August 2023.

Hun Sen calls for crackdown on Victory Day

Lim Kimya’s killing fell on January 7, the anniversary known as Victory Day for the governing CPP, which marks the date that Vietnamese troops, supported 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 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 called for a new law to brand people who wanted to overthrow his son’s government as “terrorists… who must be brought to justice”.

While there has been little effective political opposition to the CPP since 1979, that almost changed in 2013, the year that Lim Kimya was elected as an opposition member of Cambodia’s parliament following a general election in which the governing party was almost defeated by the CNRP.

The opposition had tapped into a groundswell of popular support for political change after decades of hardline rule by Hun Sen.

While the CNRP was once considered the sole viable opponent to the CPP and a potential 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”.