Kasumi
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Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey
a cousin of former King Norodom Sihanouk, was one of the few royals to join with the anti-monarchist regime established by General Lon Nol in 1970.
Minh Chin last spoke to her husband 35 years ago, over a crackly phone line. She was in Phnom Penh, on the eve of the city’s fall to the Khmer Rouge, and he was on the outskirts, preparing for his last stand against the communists. “He called me to say that our regime was lost and that we would meet again after the country got peace, and he told me to do everything the Khmer Rouge soldiers ordered me to do,” she recalled. The line then went dead, and after more than 25 years of marriage, that was the last she heard or saw of him. “I don’t know how he died, where he died, or when he died,” she said, wiping away a tear.
A largely forgotten figure in the West, Chantaraingsey still retains a potent mystique in rural Cambodia. A keen advocate for Cambodian independence, the prince was one of the few royals to throw in their with Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic, which abolished the monarchy in October 1970 and ran the country until 1975. After Chantaraingsey’s cousin, then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was overthrown in March 1970, he took up command of a military brigade in Kampong Speu. From 1972 until the fall of Lon Nol, Chantaraingsey served as brigadier general, presiding over a virtually autonomous fief.
Most sources agree Chantaraingsey was killed by the Khmer Rouge some time after they seized power in April 1975.
As the former wife of a royal, Minh Chin said she visited Sihanouk several times after he returned to the country and was crowned king in 1993. But her links to the palace – formalised only by marriage – gradually wore thin, until the old connection merely reminded her of past pains. In 1994, she retired to the pagoda in Trapaing Mon, where she has spent the past 15 years in the traditional Khmer fashion, praying and cooking food for the resident monks.
Full article - Phnom Penh Post
a cousin of former King Norodom Sihanouk, was one of the few royals to join with the anti-monarchist regime established by General Lon Nol in 1970.
Minh Chin last spoke to her husband 35 years ago, over a crackly phone line. She was in Phnom Penh, on the eve of the city’s fall to the Khmer Rouge, and he was on the outskirts, preparing for his last stand against the communists. “He called me to say that our regime was lost and that we would meet again after the country got peace, and he told me to do everything the Khmer Rouge soldiers ordered me to do,” she recalled. The line then went dead, and after more than 25 years of marriage, that was the last she heard or saw of him. “I don’t know how he died, where he died, or when he died,” she said, wiping away a tear.
A largely forgotten figure in the West, Chantaraingsey still retains a potent mystique in rural Cambodia. A keen advocate for Cambodian independence, the prince was one of the few royals to throw in their with Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic, which abolished the monarchy in October 1970 and ran the country until 1975. After Chantaraingsey’s cousin, then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was overthrown in March 1970, he took up command of a military brigade in Kampong Speu. From 1972 until the fall of Lon Nol, Chantaraingsey served as brigadier general, presiding over a virtually autonomous fief.
Most sources agree Chantaraingsey was killed by the Khmer Rouge some time after they seized power in April 1975.
As the former wife of a royal, Minh Chin said she visited Sihanouk several times after he returned to the country and was crowned king in 1993. But her links to the palace – formalised only by marriage – gradually wore thin, until the old connection merely reminded her of past pains. In 1994, she retired to the pagoda in Trapaing Mon, where she has spent the past 15 years in the traditional Khmer fashion, praying and cooking food for the resident monks.
Full article - Phnom Penh Post
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