Word: lon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Khmer republic. Our country is indivisible." The fabled Khmer empire-begun in 802, conqueror of much of Southeast Asia a millennium ago, creator of the glories of Angkor Wat-was no more. In the newly named Place de la République near the former Royal Palace, Premier Lon Nol raised the banner of the new republic: a square blue flag with a smaller red square in the upper left-hand corner overlaid with the three main towers of Angkor; in the right corner were three stars symbolizing honor and progress, Buddhism and the republic...
...that those Cambodians who had long wanted to replace the monarchy with a republic began implementing their plans. Pictures of Sihanouk's mother, Queen Kossamak, a nonruling monarch but a symbol of royal permanence, were quickly stripped from government buildings. Pictures of Sihanouk were defaced or destroyed. When Lon Nol's government polled Cambodians on whether the monarchy should be abolished and replaced with a republic, the answer was reported to be an overwhelming yes. For all that, Lon Nol felt that the time was not right...
Despite his dependence upon the Chinese and the fact that he sometimes has been styled "the Pink Prince," Sihanouk wrote: "I am not and will not become a Communist, for I disavow nothing of my religious beliefs or my nationalism." Nevertheless, he added, "with Lon Nol and the armed intervention of the foreign powers that support him, my homeland and my people have lost everything and are immersed in the worst catastrophe of their history. In these circumstances I can only hope for the total victory of the revolution, in which I shall certainly not have my place but which...
Sihanouk sharply criticized the U.S. for supporting Lon Nol's regime. "The United States has valid reasons certainly for defending itself against the propagation of Communism in Asia and most particularly in Southeast Asia," declared Sihanouk. "But it would be pure hypocrisy to assert that the United States is defending the highest interests of the Indochinese people in preventing at all costs regimes like those of Lon Nol and of Nguyen Cao Ky from falling to Communism, using for that purpose bombs and napalm and an apocalyptic destruction of the countries and peoples concerned...
...United States steps up its armed interventions or those of its allies in these two countries, the less chance there will be of their being 'neutral' or 'neutralized' in the future. And the more the United States and its allies support the regime of Lon Nol and prevent the National United Front of Cambodia from unseating it, the more they will push this front, and in consequence the Khmer people and the Cambodia of tomorrow, into the Asian socialist camp...