Word: lon
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Fighting from the jungle redoubts against the Lon Nol government in Phnom-Penh, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge insurgents were shrouded in mystery. If anything, the mystery intensified last week as the rebels dropped what might be called a Khmer curtain over the country they had just conquered. As of week's end, ten days after the fall of Phnom-Penh, very little was known about the composition of the new regime, how it was running the war-torn state or what had become of the defeated leaders who were unable to escape. With normal lines of communication severed...
...fate of some key members of the Lon Nol regime remained unclear. Former Premiers Long Boret and Sirik Matak were assumed to have been arrested by the Communists, along with several hundred lower-level officials who first found refuge in the French embassy compound but were later forced to leave. Some of these may already be dead; a radio broadcast from inside Cambodia told of beheadings, but could not be confirmed. Political trials in Phnom-Penh were said to be beginning...
There were, to be sure, some ominous notes. When the Khmer Rouge seized the government radio station, a rebel spokesman said menacingly in a broadcast: "We did not come here to talk. The Lon Nol clique [a reference to the President, who fled about a month ago] and some of its officers should all be hanged." Fearing reprisals from the Communists, a number of government officials and military officers, plus an estimated 2,000 other Cambodians, took refuge in the Hotel Le Phnom, which the International Red Cross had declared a neutral zone...
...surrender ended a bloody chapter that began in March 1970, after a bloodless coup ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk as chief of state. The new regime, headed by General Lon Nol, almost immediately launched a campaign to drive Hanoi's troops from their base camps inside Cambodia and quash the Khmer Rouge, a ragtag band of 3,000 to 5,000 leftist guerrillas. After initial hesitations, Washington backed the new regime. The U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, directed against North Vietnamese sanctuaries, was partly designed to help Lon Nol. Also helpful were $1.8 billion in aid and thousands...
...CAPTURE of Phnom Penh last week by the Khmer Rouge is a victory for the Cambodian people over the corrupt Lon Nol regime and the imperialist American policies that supported it. When the Lon No 1 government surrendered, Khmer Rouge and former government troops embraced, signalling an end to the suffering of the Cambodian people after five long years of war. The new Cambodian government holds out the hope of social reform and simple honesty that were absent under Lon No 1. For that reason alone, those in this country who support national self-determination for Cambodia should consider...