Thai authorities should immediately and thoroughly investigate the killing of a former Cambodian opposition politician in Bangkok, Human Rights Watch said today.
On January 7, 2025 in the early evening, a gunman shot dead Lim Kimya, a 74-year-old former member of the Cambodian parliament from the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), outside Bangkok's Wat Bowonniwet temple. He and his wife had just arrived by bus from Siem Reap province in Cambodia. Thai authorities later identified the gunman as Aekaluck Paenoi, a former Thai marine, and issued a warrant for his arrest. Local media reported that Cambodian authorities arrested Aekaluck in Battambang province after he fled to Cambodia, and have said they will transfer him to Thailand.
The Nation newspaper reported that a Thai criminal court issued an arrest warrant for a Cambodian national, Kimrin Pich, deputy head of a public market in Phnom Penh, for his alleged involvement in the killing. Police Maj.-Gen. Theeradej Thammasuthee, chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau's investigation division, said that Pich had entered Thailand with Kimya. CCTV footage shows Pich inside the same minibus as Kimya as they traveled to Bangkok. Theeradej said that Pich took a flight from Bangkok's international airport following the attack.
"The brutal killing of a prominent Cambodian opposition politician in downtown Bangkok raises grave concerns of foreign government involvement in a politically motivated murder on Thai soil," said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Thai authorities need to fully investigate the killing of Lim Kimya and ensure all those responsible are brought to justice."
Cambodian authorities have systematically repressed critics of the government among the political opposition and civil society groups, including through harassment, threats and instigation of violence, arbitrary arrests and detention, unfair trials and baseless prison sentences. Since the government-controlled Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in 2017, Cambodian authorities have pursued former party members - including those living in exile in neighboring Thailand - on politically motivated charges.
Cambodia currently is detaining 38 political prisoners, according to the Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO.
Kimya's most recent Facebook post criticized Hun Many, Cambodia's deputy prime minister and brother of Prime Minister Hun Manet, for spending money on a January 1 New Year's celebration that had "no lasting benefit to the people." Kimya wrote that the government should instead respect human rights.
The killing of Kimya, a dual Cambodian and French national who was formerly in the French civil service, sends a message to critics of the Cambodian government that nowhere is safe, Human Rights Watch said.
Many other Cambodian dissidents who had fled to Thailand have been targets of so-called transnational repression - human rights abuses carried out across borders to stifle dissent - at times with the cooperation of Thai authorities.
A CNRP activist, Phorn Phanna, told Human Rights Watch that in August 2023, assailants had surveilled and followed him around his neighborhood in Thailand's Rayong province, photographing him from their car and then physically assaulted him. Ten construction workers who witnessed the attack, which was recorded on security cameras of nearby shops, came to Phanna's rescue.
Cambodian leaders continued to threaten Phanna as he waited to be resettled to the United States. Radio Free Asia reported that an audio clip released on Facebook revealed that in September 2024, former Prime Minister Hun Sen, the current senate president, stated that, "The working group in Thailand must work with Thai police to eliminate the group of people who are living in Thailand, one is Phorn Phanna…. Our forces must bring him here at any cost - dead or alive."
In December 2019, two Khmer-speaking assailants attacked the CNRP activist Soun Chamroeun at a 7-Eleven minimart steps away from his apartment building in Bangkok. They assaulted him with a stun gun for 15 minutes, trying to subdue him and drag him out of the store while beating him in the head, back, and arms. When the 7-Eleven employees announced that they had called the police, the unidentified men fled.
Thai authorities have also committed human rights violations against Cambodia dissidents that may have involved the Cambodian government. In November 2024, Thai authorities violated international law by forcibly returning six Cambodian political opposition activists and a young child, putting them at risk of unfair trials and mistreatment in Cambodia.
A 2024 Human Rights Watch report showed a pattern of transnational repression in which Thai authorities helped neighboring governments take unlawful actions against dissidents and activists seeking protection in Thailand. In exchange, Thai authorities were able to target critics of the Thai government living in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as part of a "swap mart" of refugees and dissidents.
"Thailand's response to Lim Kimya's killing will show whether Thai authorities will accept or reject shocking crimes that may be acts of transnational repression," Pearson said. "France and other friends of Thailand should urge the government to urgently conduct a credible investigation and hold all those responsible to account."
