The shock killing of a former Cambodian politician stoked safety fears that Thailand is no refuge for those fleeing autocracy.
Reporting from 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.
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