In the weeks before he was shot dead while drinking a gas-station coffee in Phnom Penh in July 2016, the popular Cambodian government critic Kem Ley began a project posting fables about his country's broken society to Facebook.
With characters bearing satirical names such as the villagers "Aunty No More Farm" and "Beyond Regret" and government officials like "Do Not Care" and "Uncle 570" (referring to the model of Lexus preferred by Cambodia's elite), the 45-year-old medical doctor penned scorching commentaries not possible if he had used real names.
In the final fable, posted the day before he was killed, Kem Ley told a tale of how a team of lions, tigers and snakes monopolised the best parts of their garden-of-plenty by attacking any usually docile animals who wandered near their riches.
"A few of the gentle animals, like the cows, horses and goats, try going to the corner of the garden," he wrote, "but the ferocious animals mercilessly eat them up to keep up all the news of fear -- you kill one in order to scare a thousand!"
It proved eerily prophetic.
The next morning, bloody images of Kem Ley's lifeless body laying supine on the floor of a well-known city Caltex station spread rapidly across the nation via Facebook within an hour of the shooting. Video clips of his distraught, pregnant wife arriving at the chaotic scene soon followed.
Adding insult to injury, police released a video of a man arrested over the killing later that evening; he seemed to grin as he insisted his name was "Meet Kill". The 44-year-old former soldier -- whose real name is Oeuth Ang -- was sentenced to life last year, but few Cambodians believe the official account that he acted alone.
Two years since the killing, the circumstances surrounding Kem Ley's public assassination continue to demand a proper investigation -- and never more so than now. So far, the Cambodian authorities have repeatedly dismissed calls to allow an independent investigation and even refused to release key confiscated CCTV footage from the gas station. Former opposition leader Sam Rainsy last year even sued Chevron in an attempt to obtain the footage.
Not since Cambodia's dark days as one-party communist state before the UN-run elections of May 1993 has Prime Minister Hun Sen -- who in his 34th year in office is now the longest-serving prime minister in the world -- faced so much pressure to reverse course and loosen his iron grip.
The second anniversary of Kem Ley's death earlier this month coincided with the start of the official campaign period for Cambodia's contentious national election which will will take place tomorrow with the country's opposition leader in prison, his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) banned and dozens more in prison or hiding.
Hun Sen has said the CNRP and its jailed leader, Kem Sokha, were planning a US-backed "colour revolution" to overthrow him, and that Cambodia, with 19 other parties on the election ballot paper, is an open regime that respects human rights. That may well be a tough sell, even after the election. Besides the opposition leader, two Radio Free Asia journalists have been in prison without trial on spurious "espionage" charges for more than 250 days, while Tep Vanny, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, is herself approaching two years in prison.
Hun Sen, though, seems confident. In August 1997, UN investigators verified that at least 41 of his rivals had been summarily executed after he ousted his coalition co-prime minister in a military battle. The next year, US congressman Stephen Solarz described the July 1998 election as "The Miracle on the Mekong".
Winning hearts and minds will be different this time, though. Where his Cambodian People's Party once controlled every aspect of broadcast media in the country, the rapid spread of Facebook and smartphone usage has broken the monopoly.
Hun Sen's government might convince the world after the election that it has "softened". But so long as it continues to refuse to allow a proper investigation into the brazen assassination of Kem Ley, few if any Cambodians will ever believe that their country is one where basic rights and the rule of law reigns.
Kem Ley's widow, Bou Rachana escaped Cambodia after her husband's death and was granted a visa to live in Australia with her five sons in February. She continues to reject claims her husband had ever met his killer or had any money issues, with Oeuth Ang claiming to have acted out of anger over an unpaid $3,000 debt.
It has also not been lost on many Cambodians that Kem Ley had appeared on Radio Free Asia only two nights before his murder, calling for investigations into that week's Global Witness report on Hun Sen's family's near monopolisation of Cambodia's economy.
Video footage of the assassin's escape after the hit also raises serious questions about the official account of events. In one video that suddenly spread on Facebook a few months after the murder, Oeuth Ang is seen running down a major city road adjacent to the gas station as a municipal police motorcycle slowly trails him. He repeatedly brushes off deferential requests from the plainclothed driver, who appeared familiar with him, to mount the motorcycle before dropping a small black object -- seemingly the Glock pistol used in the murder. Shortly after, in a separate video filmed further down the road, he agrees to mount the motorcycle to flee as an angry crowd kick at him.
But instead of addressing the many questions raised by the clips, or others such as how the poor former soldier could afford a new Glock, the courts simply accepted the killer's insistence that he had acted alone, angered by the unpaid debt.
The municipal court also morbidly insisted on trying the assassin under his assumed moniker of "Meet Kill"-- reasoning that he insisted on the name and refused to confirm his identity as Oeuth Ang. Most recently, they have continued to summon Kem Ley's widow back to court in Cambodia for "questioning" -- a move seen by many as a repugnant tactic of harassment.
Hun Sen, meanwhile, has repeatedly sued anyone who suggests he was behind the murder; and police and the courts have spared few resources in their investigations to locate and arrest those who use Facebook to claim he was involved. The far-greater efforts put into these investigations has been in stark contrast.
Then again, none of this is anything really new for Cambodia.
Kem Ley was only the latest in a long line of government critics to be gunned down, stretching back to union leader Chea Vichea (2004), journalist Khim Sambo (2008) and the environmentalist Chut Wutty (2012).
Their real killers were never brought to justice, and few people in Cambodia hold out hope anything will change this time.
Nevertheless, after the election, Hun Sen's government will be keen to prove it is still a regime that respects basic rights like freedom of expression. His party has many pro-reform voices eager to help prove that case and who hope against all odds Cambodia can move past its violent past.
To do that, they need to push for an independent and credible investigation into Kem Ley's death.
Without answers, it will be hard for anyone to escape the conclusion that the impunity surrounding murders of outspoken critics like him are a feature -- not a bug -- of Cambodia's legal system. "You kill one in order to scare a thousand."
Alex Willemyns is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh.