Victorian MP Hong Lim is still a citizen of Cambodia and visited the country on average once per year between 1993 and 2014. He has been told he will beaten by the Khmer people if he returns. Photograph: Twitter

Victorian MP Hong Lim warned he will be attacked if he returns to Cambodia

Spokesman for the interior ministry says Lim, who was involved in a protest condemning a visit by the Cambodian prime minister’s son, ‘insulted the nation’

The Guardian | 13 October 2016

The Khmer people will beat Victorian MP Hong Lim if he ever returns toCambodia, where he is still a citizen, because he “insulted the nation”, a senior Cambodian official has said.

The spokesman for the interior ministry, Khieu Sopheak, told the Cambodia Daily newspaper this week that although officially Lim was still a Khmer citizen, he was no longer accepted by the people.

The comments came due to Lim’s involvement in a protest led by the Cambodian Association of Victoria last week to condemn a visit to the state from Hun Manet, the eldest son of Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen.

The Cambodian Australian community remains angered at the murder of the political activist and critic of the Cambodian government Kem Lay in Phnom Penh in July. Many believe it was a political assassination.

Speaking of Lim’s involvement in the protest, Sopheak told the Cambodia Daily: “I think that the Khmer people will beat him if he comes to Cambodia anytime.

“It will be worse than when they beat Mr Khieu Samphan in 1991.”

Samphan was beaten by a government-organised mob in a four-hour assault on the streets of Phnom Penh in 1991. He served as Cambodia’s head of state until 1979, was a powerful official in the Khmer Rouge movement and, in 2014, he was convicted to life in jail for crimes against humanity during the Cambodian genocide.

In a statement provided to Guardian Australia on Thursday, Lim, the Victorian parliamentary secretary for Asian engagement, said the threat of violence against him by the government “truly defines the violent nature, brutal modus operandi and an entrenched culture of impunity that have come to characterise this heinous regime’s 30 years of destructive rule”.

“There is no point of me returning to Cambodia to fulfil their criminal intent,” he said.

Lim said he had visited Cambodia on average once per year between 1993 and 2014. His last visit was a disturbing one.

“I visited Veng Sreng Street on 4 January 2014, a day following the shooting dead of five garment workers for asking for a pay rise,” he said.

Cambodian garment workers' battle for labour rights deserves our support- Jim Murphy

While he said he would not risk returning, Lim added that Cambodia belonged to all Cambodians, “inside and outside the country”. He said the country had knowingly violated its own constitution and the UN’s charters on human rights and freedom of movement by blacklisting him from the country.

In August Lim was banned from entering Cambodia after describing the Sen government as a “beast” during a radio interview.

“My rights to participation in Cambodian national affairs is guaranteed by the country’s constitution, which the Hun Sen government appears to be violating on a daily basis,” Lim said.

“Of course it bothers me for not being able to go to Cambodia ... not because of being banned as such ... but because of not being able to enjoy everything I love about my homeland, especially the food.”

The Cambodian Association of Victoria’s president, Youhorn Chea, condemned the comments about Lim.

“I think the Cambodia government is very corrupt,” he said. “There is no respite, no freedom of speech, it is awful. Cambodian people want to return but they don’t want to return to die. But the government is corrupted.”