Victorian MP Hong Lim has notified police over a letter which threatened him and his family as well as other prominent members of the Australian-Cambodian community.
Mr Lim, an outspoken opponent to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, told SBS Khmer he received the letter a week before he attended a public protest against the Cambodian leader who was visiting Sydney for the Australia-ASEAN summit.
“The letter said: They will kill, they will shoot the four families dead and they say they are the one who can get into Australia anytime as they have wife and children in Australia,” the MP told SBS.
Mr Lim, who is also the head of the Cambodian Australian Federation, said the Australian Federal Police were investigating the incident and had been monitoring his home as well as the homes of Dandenong mayor You Horn Chea, Dandenong councillor Meng Heang Tak and political refugee Bou Rachana who were also threatened in the letter.
Mrs Rachana is the widow of political analyst Kem Ley who was murdered in Cambodia in July 2016. She and her five children were granted asylum to Australia in February 2018.
At the family’s welcoming ceremony in Melbourne the Cambodian community and other opponents to Mr Sen burned effigies of the Prime Minster.
Mr Lim said the threatening letter boasted how he and his family could be killed easily and “Australia could not arrest him”.
Tension between Prime Minster Sen and his Australian-Cambodian opponents escalated in the lead-up to his Australian visit when the leader told those planning to protest against him in Sydney that he would “pursue them to their homes and beat them up”.
Victorian Police confirmed to SBS an investigation has been launched after a threatening letter was delivered to a man in early March, adding that the “investigation was ongoing”.
