The killer was waiting near a noodle stand on Tuesday afternoon, on a busy street in Bangkok, with outdoor backpacks packed. When the bus from the border with Cambodia took off, and went towards it, video images released by the Thai police were shown. Three shots went off, which sounded like fireworks, witnesses said. The killer then returned to the noodle shop, where his motorcycle was parked, and left the scene of the crime.
The victim was Lim Kimya, 73, a former legislator with the popular Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was crushed by the Hun dynasty that has ruled the Southeast Asian country for four decades.
Thai police said they are still investigating the murder, and a warrant has been issued for the suspect’s arrest. But members of Cambodia’s distraught political opposition say their ranks have been hit by dozens of arrests, detentions and executions, all for daring to stand up for the Hun family.
The killing of Mr. Lim Kimya, they say echoes the kind of political violence that has turned Cambodia into a country where independent intellectuals fear for their lives and world-renowned environmentalists flee into exile.
Um Sam An, who was also a CNRP member of parliament who is in political exile in the United States, called the death of Mr. Lim Kimya as “political murder.”
“Dictators around the world are increasingly turning to international repression,” said Sam Rainsy, the party’s former president and a victim of repeated assassination attempts.
Since officially taking over from his father, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet, who graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, has shown little evidence of loosening the family’s power. Arrests of those who disagreed with it continued. On Tuesday, the day Mr. Lim Kimya was killed, Mr. Hun Sen, who still leads the Cambodian Senate, pushed for a law to be passed that would treat political disagreement as terrorism.
Mr. Lim Kimya, who was a citizen of France and Cambodia twice, was traveling from Cambodia to neighboring Thailand with his French wife. As Thai paramedics tried unsuccessfully to administer CPR, he stood by her side, blood streaming down her face.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s Criminal Court issued a warrant for Ekaluck Paenoi, 41, the motorcyclist it said was responsible for the shooting.
Pen Bona, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, said that since the murder happened in Thailand, the journalists’ questions should be directed to the Thai authorities.
For more than thirty years, Mr. Lim Kimya is a civil servant in France, working in the department of economics and finance. He studied mathematics in France, Cambodia’s former colonial power, after leaving home in the 1970s as the country began to descend into chaos under the hardline Communist Khmer Rouge. He eventually returned to Cambodia and joined opposition political parties, including the CNRP
Mr. Lim Kimya was elected to the National Assembly in 2013, four years before the party was dissolved by Cambodia’s supreme court.
Mr. Hun Sen was a junior officer in the Khmer Rouge, who oversaw the deaths of about a quarter of Cambodia’s population. After its fall, he took power, eliminating political rivals and becoming the world’s longest-serving prime minister before handing the reins to his eldest son. While Cambodia’s economy has developed rapidly in recent years, with the support of China, so has corruption and kleptocracy.
Last month, Mr. Lim Kimya wrote on his Facebook page about the dramatic ouster of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who inherited from his father. He noted the family status of the al-Assad political dynasty. He wrote about the misery of a totalitarian regime. He didn’t have to make direct comparisons to Cambodia for the criticism to sting.
“Mr. “Lim Kimya was a very educated, patriotic man who served his country and his second country, France,” said Kem Monovithya, the exiled daughter of Kem Sokha, another former opposition leader under house arrest in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. after being sentenced to 27 years for treason.
Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, is a magnet for political dissidents from nearby democracies and, increasingly, a staging ground for deportations and forced removals of human rights groups that it says border on illegality. In November, seven Cambodians registered with the United Nations refugee agency were forcibly returned home by Thai authorities. After their return, six of the seven – one was a child – were charged with treason in a Cambodian court.
Thailand is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and therefore does not officially recognize political asylum seekers. Thai authorities have returned asylum seekers and others seeking refuge here from Vietnam, Laos, China and other countries with repressive governments.
Hundreds of Cambodian dissidents have flocked to Thailand in recent months, but the forced deportation last year and the killing of Mr. Lim Kimya scared them a lot.
Khem Monykosal, 52, a political activist, fled persecution in Cambodia two years ago. He still hasn’t left the room he took refuge in Thailand, he said, despite registering with the UN refugee agency. He was worried that there might be a political assassination. Then came the killing of Mr. Lim Kimya on Tuesday.
“As an asylum seeker in Thailand, I am very concerned about my safety,” he said. “There is a planned assassination plot.”
Sun Narin contributed reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Muktita Suhartono from Bangkok.
Source link
