25 Facts About Lon Nol

Marshal Lon Nol was a Cambodian military officer and politician who served as Prime Minister of Cambodia twice, as well as serving repeatedly as defence minister and provincial governor.

Lon Nol was the commander-in-chief of the Khmer National Armed Forces during the Cambodian Civil War and became President of the Khmer Republic on 10 March 1972.

On 1 April 1975,16 days before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, Lon Nol fled to the United States, first to Hawaii and then to California, where he remained until his death in 1985.

Lon Nol's maternal grandfather was a Chinese immigrant from Fujian who later became the governor of Prey Veng.

Lon Nol was educated in the relatively privileged surroundings of the Lycee Chasseloup-Laubat in Saigon, followed by the Cambodian Royal Military Academy.

Lon Nol became a magistrate, and soon proved himself as an efficient enforcer of French rule against a series of anti-colonial disturbances in 1939.

Lon Nol became an associate of King Norodom Sihanouk, and by the late 1940s, when he set up a right-wing, monarchist, pro-independence political group, was becoming increasingly involved in the developing Cambodian political scene.

Lon Nol was appointed the Army Chief of Staff in 1955, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 1960, as well as serving as Defence Minister.

Lon Nol became prime minister, and the following year troops carried out a savage repression of a leftist-inspired revolt, the Samlaut Uprising, in Battambang Province.

Lon Nol was injured in a car crash later in 1967, and temporarily retired from politics.

Lon Nol initially refused to countenance Sihanouk being deposed as Head of State; to force his hand, Sirik Matak played him a tape-recorded press conference from Paris, in which Sihanouk blamed them for the unrest and threatened to execute them both on his return to Phnom Penh.

General Lon Nol assumed the powers of the Head of State on an emergency basis.

Lon Nol's health started to decline after he suffered a stroke in February 1971.

Lon Nol's rule became increasingly erratic and authoritarian: he appointed himself Marshal in April 1971, and in October suspended the National Assembly, stating he would no longer "vainly play the game of democracy and freedom" in wartime.

Lon Nol insisted on directing many of the Khmer National Armed Forces operations personally.

In time Lon Nol's regime became completely dependent upon large quantities of American aid that towards the end were not backed by the political and military resolve needed to effectively help the beleaguered republic.

Lon Nol was increasingly dependent on the advice of soothsayers and Buddhist mystics: at one point during a Khmer Rouge assault on Phnom Penh, he sprinkled a circular line of consecrated sand in order to defend the city.

Lon Nol was able to escape, first to Indonesia and then to the United States.

Lon Nol spent time in Hawaii before settling in Fullerton, California, in 1979.

Lon Nol lived with his second wife Sovanna Lon and several of his nine children until his heart condition-related death on 17 November 1985 at St Jude Medical Center.

Lon Nol was buried at Loma Vista Memorial Park in Fullerton.

Lon Nol termed his ideology, a blend of nationalism and mysticism, "Neo-Khmerism".

Lon Nol expressed an ambition of reuniting the ethnic Khmers of Cambodia with the Khmer Krom of the Mekong Delta and the Khmer Surin of Thailand, projecting a state of "thirty million" Khmers by the year 2020.

In late life, Lon Nol referred to himself as a "black Khmer" and sought to deny the fact that he had partial Chinese ancestry.

Lon Nol's grandnephew is French kickboxer Antoine Pinto, grandson of his brother Lon Non.