Former Cambodian opposition MP shot dead in Bangkok ‘assassination’

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”.