Lon Nol

Lon Nol was a Cambodian soldier and politician who served as Prime Minister and then President during the Khmer Republic from 1970 to 1975. Born in 1913 in Prey Veng province in French Cambodia to a family of Khmer-Chinese descent, he trained at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat in Saigon and joined the colonial gendarmerie in the 1930s, rising through provincial postings.

After Cambodian independence in 1953 he held a series of military and cabinet posts under King Norodom Sihanouk, including chief of staff of the army, defence minister, and twice prime minister. By the late 1960s he led a conservative bloc that opposed Sihanouk's tolerance of North Vietnamese sanctuaries on Cambodian soil.

In March 1970, while Sihanouk was abroad, Lon Nol presided over a National Assembly vote that deposed the king and abolished the monarchy. He proclaimed the Khmer Republic in October 1970 and became its first president in 1972 after a referendum. His government, backed by the United States with heavy bombing of the countryside, fought the North Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge but steadily lost ground. A stroke in 1971 left him partly paralysed.

On 1 April 1975, with the Khmer Rouge closing on Phnom Penh, he flew into exile in Indonesia and then the United States, settling in Fullerton, California, where he died in 1985. The Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh sixteen days after his departure.

The name Lon Nol places the family name Lon first in Khmer order, with Nol as the personal name. He bore it as a masculine name common among Khmer families.