A Cambodian man who is wanted by Thai police in connection to the murder of a former opposition lawmaker is the brother of Pich Sros, a politician who initiated proceedings against the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, that led to its 2017 dissolution, and holds a minor government position.
On Tuesday, Lim Kimya, a former CNRP member of parliament, was gunned down in central Bangkok. One suspect in the murder — Ekalak Paenoi, a former Thai marine — was arrested on Wednesday in Cambodia’s Battambang province and as of this writing is still in the country pending extradition to Thailand.
But a second man, believed to be the so-called “spotter” in the murder who followed Lim Kimya on a bus from Cambodia to Thailand, remains at large.
On Wednesday, Thai police identified and issued an arrest warrant for Pich Kimsrin, who they said was an accomplice to Ekalak.
Thai media outlets have also released CCTV footage showing the 24-year-old shadowing Lim Kimya and his family in Bangkok and riding the same cross-border bus. CCTV footage shows who Thai police believe to be Pich Kimsrin at the scene of the murder but his current whereabouts are unknown and it is unclear if Cambodian officials have initiated an investigation into him. Authorities have told RFA they will investigate the case only following a request from their Thai counterparts.
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As Cambodian officials remain silent on the involvement of Pich Kimsrin in the killing, opposition activists and other Cambodians have been using open source information to, first, identify him, and now try to understand more about his background.
A review of publicly available information by Radio Free Asia reveals that Pich Kimsrin was the deputy head of the administration running the Phsar Kandal market in Phnom Penh, according to a since-deleted post on the market’s Facebook page.
Additionally, one of Pich Kimsrin’s Facebook accounts shows that he started his career as a journalist for a pro-government news outlet called Fast News Daily, where he wrote sports and entertainment stories that have since been deleted from the news site. A representative of the news site could not be reached for comment. Pich Kimsrin’s Facebook page displayed reports from the Fast News Daily’s Facebook account, posts about news in Phnom Penh, as well as photos of his own press pass.
However, it is his apparent familial links that reveal him to be connected to a party that has long had the CNRP in its crosshairs.
Family ties
Information obtained by RFA and a sweep of social media show multiple links between Pich Kimsrin and Pich Sros, who is the president of the Cambodian Youth Party, or CYP. Pich Kimsrin’s birth certificate, which RFA obtained but cannot independently be verified and which has been widely circulated online, lists “Pich Neng” and “Sieng Chinlai” as his parents and Kampong Cham as province of birth. The same parents and place of birth are listed on a university certificate of Pich Sros that was published on Fast News Daily.
In a 2015 picture taken at a wedding and posted on their father’s Facebook page, a young Pich Kimsrin sits front and center by Pich Neng’s knees surrounded by well-placed family members.
Many are linked to Pich Sros’s CYP or work for government affiliated organisations like the Cambodian Red Cross, an aid organization headed by former first lady Bun Rany which had been criticized by Lim Kimya, among others, for politicization.
Pich Sros, the CYP president whose 2017 filing led to the dissolution of Cambodia’s opposition party, stands smiling in the back. Both the bride, Yi Ratha, and the groom, Pich Kim Sreang, were listed as 2023 election candidates for the CYP, as was another in the portrait group, Chhuon Limhuot. Pich Sithan, who stands in front of Pich Sros holding the hand of a baby, appeared as a CYP candidate for the commune election held a year earlier in 2022.
Over the years, most family members shown in the photo have been photographed with Pich Kimsrin, an RFA review of social media found. However, as news of his alleged involvement in the murder was made public, family members including Pich Kim Sreang, Chhuon Limhuot, Lou Leangseng and Suos Sokna, one by one started locking their accounts.
Fast News Daily, where Pich Kimsrin worked as a young journalist, also appears to be linked to Pich Sros and his party. The news outlet is registered to Kehaktompor Fast News Daily company, according to the Ministry of Commerce, and with only one listed director, Keo Chan Sophara.
Keo Chan Sophara’s name appears on the Cambodian Youth Party’s 2018 candidate list from Svay Rieng, according to online website Sabay, and as a party commune council candidate from Phnom Penh in 2022, according to Cambodia’s National Election Commission’s online portal.
Fast News Daily heavily features Pich Sros, with numerous short articles about his comments and posts on Facebook. They even published his certificate and report card from Khemarak University in March 2023.
Neither Keo Chan Sophara nor Fast News could be reached for comment.
Minor party with a big claim to fame
Founded in 2015 by Pich Sros, the Cambodian Youth Party is one among Cambodia’s numerous small political parties whose names are little known outside the country.
But while it garnered just 1 percent of the most recent vote, the party has played an outsized role in the country’s recent political history.
Following the midnight arrest of Kem Sokha, the former president of the CNRP who was later sentenced to 27 years for treason, Sros and his party were the first to file a complaint to the Supreme Court of Cambodia in September 2017 requesting the dissolution of the party. Two months later, the CNRP was dissolved by the Supreme Court and 118 members of the party were banned from politics for five years.
Pich Sros is also a member of the Supreme Consultative Council, an ad hoc body created by then-Prime Minister Hun Sen in 2018 to include smaller political parties who did not have any seats but were included in the new body to advise the government. Though the party failed to win any seats in 2018 or 2023, CYP joined the council with the lead representative, in this case Pich Sros, given a rank equal to a cabinet minister.
Cambodians in the country and abroad expressed anger with both the murder and what they see as the government’s seeming disinterest in investigating the case.
Thit Kimhun, a CNRP official, told RFA the opposition party would hold ceremonies for the slain politician in Long Beach, California, and Lowell, Massachusetts, on Jan. 19, while others would be hosted in France, Japan and South Korea.
“We won’t allow this injustice to happen in Cambodia and now in Thailand,” she said. “We will continue to investigate and demand justice for Lim Kimya and his family.”
In Springvale, Australia, a seven-day memorial ceremony will begin Jan. 12 with the local Cambodian community urging the Thai and Australian governments to investigate, said Chea Yohorn, president of the Khmer Association of Victoria.
“The suspect is not an unknown guy,” Seng Sary, a political analyst based in Australia, told RFA. “He is a brother of Pich Sros. Giving justice to Lim Kimya will restore Cambodia’s reputation. We shouldn’t let him escape.”
Calls to Pich Sros went unanswered Friday but earlier in the day he posted a photo to Facebook showing journalists packed tightly around an unseen figure, cameras and microphones shoved toward his face. The image depicts then-U.S. Ambassador Patrick Murphy speaking with reporters outside the trial of Kem Sokha.
Above the photo, Pich Sros wrote a pithy note: “journalists have the right to ask questions/ but don’t have right to force people for answers/ journalists have the rights to ask/ but don’t have the right to demand for answers according to what they want.”