Word: lon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Frequently Wept. Forced into exile in Peking by the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime that ousted him in 1970, Sihanouk had backed the Communist Khmer rebels. But since their capture of Phnom-Penh, the prince has reportedly been unhappy about the new regime's ruthless campaign of intimidation and reprisals against everyone with any connection to Cambodia's past. On a world tour last year, friends say, Sihanouk frequently wept over the course of events...
...fact, if the Communists had not evacuated Phnom Penh in April, many thousands would have died of cholera, plague and starvation. The city's pre-1970 peacetime population had been 600,000; by last April, it had been swelled by 3 million refugees from the war. The U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime had lost control of the whole countryside, so it depended completely on American food shipments. These were inadequate; the U.S. was continuing a policy described by the Government Accounting Office in 1971: "Not to become involved in the problem of civilian war victims in Cambodia." While...
...press treatment of Cambodia since the fall of the Lon Nol regime last April is a prime example of news distortion. An editorial last summer in The New York Times, titled "Cambodia's Crime," summed up the official view of events there. It spoke of millions of people from Phnom Penh and other cities "forced by the Communists at gunpoint to walk into the countryside without organized provision for food, shelter, physical security, or medical care." It concluded that Cambodia "resembles a giant prison camp with the urban supporters of the former regime now being worked to death on thin...
...Penh, still stands: "Stories of a bloodbath, as reported by other news agencies, cannot be verified and there is every indication that these accounts are lies." Proof of alleged executions usually comes from refugees in Thailand, who "knew" of such killings without having seen them. Many actively backed the Lon Nol government, and the Thais restrict access to refugee camps to some U.S. officials, who may steer journalists toward handpicked refugees. Until more foreigners enter Cambodia and bring back independent reports, events there will remain cloudy...
...Guardian, seven planeloads of Cambodians left for that country from France, while in the U.S. on January 26,114 Cambodians publicly announced their desire to return. The radical press covered these news conferences in Philadelphia and Washington; the orthodox press blacked them out. Many of these people are ex-Lon Nol soldiers; the Cambodian government says that it welcomes such people back, if they are willing to work and to defend the country...