Kem Ley (19 October 1970-10 July 2016) was a Cambodian political activist and an enemy of Hun Sen's government who was assassinated in 2016. Kem Ley had a hand in the founding of the Grassroots Democratic Party, and he was a popular political commentator until he was murdered at a Phnom Penh gas station shortly before upcoming Cambodian elections.
Biography[]
The scene of Kem Ley's murder
Kem Ley was involved in grassroots activist groups in Cambodia, a country that was ruled by the non-ideological and centrist Cambodian People's Party under Hun Sen. He became a popular political commentator, and he criticized Hun Sen and his government. In 2014, he founded the Khmer for Khmer advocacy group, leading to localized political parties being formed. The next year, his colleagues formed the Grassroots Democracy Party in opposition to the authoritarian Cambodian government, but Kem Ley did not enter politics; he was instead an opposition activist. At 9:00 AM on 10 July 2016, Kem Ley was murdered by an assassin at the Caltex gas station on Monivong and Mao Tse Toung boulevards in the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh, and the police arrested the suspect, later claiming that his murder came after a dispute over cash. However, given the fact that Ley was a critic of Hun Sen's government and that elections were nearing, it has been suspected that the government may have had a hand in Kem Ley's "assassination".