The incident bore all the hallmarks of a cold-blooded, professional assassination.
In Bangkok’s historic royal quarter, near a well-known temple, security camera footage captured a man parking his motorbike, calmly removing his helmet to reveal his face, and crossing the road.
Moments later, gunshots rang out, and another man collapsed to the ground. The perpetrator quickly returned to his motorbike, seemingly discarding an object along the way, before riding off.
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 had been struck in the chest by two bullets. Lim had recently arrived in Bangkok with his wife, traveling by bus from Cambodia. Despite efforts by a police officer to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“He was courageous, with an independent mind,” said Monovithya Kem, daughter of CNRP leader Kem Sokha, in a statement to the BBC. “No one but the Cambodian state would have wanted to kill him.”
Lim Kimya, who held dual Cambodian and French citizenship, chose to remain in Cambodia even after the CNRP was dissolved. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), formed by merging two earlier opposition parties, came close to defeating the ruling party of Hun Sen in the 2013 elections. Following this near-defeat, Hun Sen accused the CNRP of treason, leading to its disbandment and a campaign of legal and extralegal persecution against its members. In 2023, Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years in prison after years of house arrest.
While high-profile political assassinations are not common in Cambodia, they have occurred. In 2016, Kem Ley, a popular critic of Hun Sen, was fatally shot in Phnom Penh, and in 2012, environmental activist Chut Wutty was also killed.
Thai police have identified Lim Kimya’s assassin from security footage as a former Thai navy officer now working as a motorbike taxi driver. While locating the suspect seems straightforward, whether the case will be fully investigated remains uncertain.
