Former Cambodian Opposition Member Lim Kimya Killed in Bangkok

The killer was waiting by a noodle stand on Tuesday afternoon, on a busy street in Bangkok, with foreign backpackers milling around. When the bus traveling from the border with Cambodia pulled up, he strolled toward it, video footage released by the Thai police showed. Three shots rang out, like firecrackers, witnesses said. Then the assassin casually returned to the noodle stand, 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 nation for four decades.

Thai police say they are still investigating the killing, and an arrest warrant has been issued for the suspect. But members of Cambodia’s beleaguered political opposition say that their ranks have suffered from dozens of arrests, imprisonments and assassinations, all for daring to stand up to the Hun family.

Mr. Lim Kimya’s killing, they say, echoes the kind of political violence that has turned Cambodia into a country where independent thinkers fear for their lives and internationally lauded environmentalists flee into exile.

Um Sam An, a fellow former parliamentarian for the C.N.R.P. who is in political exile in the United States, called Mr. Lim Kimya’s death a “political assassination.”

“Dictators around the world are increasingly resorting to transnational repression,” said Sam Rainsy, the onetime president of the party and himself the target of repeated assassination attempts.

Since formally taking over two years ago from his father, Hun Sen, Prime Minister Hun Manet of Cambodia, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has shown little evidence of loosening the family’s tight grip on power. Arrests of dissidents have continued. On Tuesday, the day of Mr. Lim Kimya’s killing, Mr. Hun Sen, who still heads Cambodia’s Senate, pushed for the passage of a law that would deem political dissent as terrorism.

Mr. Lim Kimya, who was a dual French and Cambodian citizen, was traveling by land from Cambodia to neighboring Thailand with his French wife. As Thai paramedics tried unsuccessfully to administer C.P.R., she stood near him, his blood spattered on her face.

On Wednesday, the Thai Criminal Court issued a warrant for Ekaluck Paenoi, 41, the motorcyclist who it said was responsible for the fatal shooting.

Pen Bona, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, said that since the killing happened in Thailand, journalists’ questions should be directed to the Thai authorities.

For more than three decades, Mr. Lim Kimya was a civil servant in France, working at the ministry of economy and finance. He studied statistics in France, the former colonial power in Cambodia, after having left home in the 1970s when the country began descending into anarchy under the radical Communist Khmer Rouge. He eventually returned to Cambodia and aligned himself with opposition political parties, including the C.N.R.P.

Mr. Lim Kimya was elected to the National Assembly in 2013, four years before the party was dissolved by Cambodia’s top court.

Mr. Hun Sen was a minor official in the Khmer Rouge, which presided over the deaths of up to a quarter of Cambodia’s population. After its fall, he rose to power, eliminated political rivals and became the world’s longest-serving prime minister before handing the reins to his eldest son. While Cambodia’s economy has developed quickly in recent years, with backing from China, so, too, has corruption and kleptocracy.

Last month, Mr. Lim Kimya wrote on his Facebook page about the dramatic ousting of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who inherited power from his father. He noted the familial nature of the al-Assad political dynasty. He wrote of the woes of autocracy. He didn’t have to make a direct comparison with Cambodia for the criticism to sting.

“Mr. Lim Kimya was a highly educated, patriotic man who served both his motherland and his second country, France,” said Kem Monovithya, the exiled daughter of Kem Sokha, another former opposition leader who is under house arrest in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, after being sentenced to 27 years for treason.

Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is both a magnet for political dissidents from nearby autocratic countries and, increasingly, a staging ground for deportations and forced removals that human rights groups say border on illegality. In November, seven Cambodians who were registered with the United Nations refugee agency were forcibly sent 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 U.N. refugee convention and therefore does not officially recognize individuals who claim political asylum. Thai authorities have returned asylum seekers and others trying to seek refuge here to Vietnam, Laos, China and other countries with repressive governments.

Hundreds of Cambodian dissidents have flocked to Thailand in recent months, but the forced deportations last year and Mr. Lim Kimya’s killing have them spooked.

Khem Monykosal, 52, a political activist, fled persecution in Cambodia two years ago. He has barely left the room where he is sheltering in Thailand, he said, despite registering with the U.N. refugee agency. He worried about the possibility of political assassinations. Then came Mr. Lim Kimya’s killing on Tuesday.

“As an asylum seeker in Thailand, I am very worried about my safety,” he said. “There are planned plots to kill.”

Sun Narin contributed reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Muktita Suhartono from Bangkok.