Ba Chuc Massacre

Skulls from the Ba Chuc Massacre

On April 18th, 1978, the Khmer Rouge came to a village called Ba Chuc in An Giang Province. They forced innocent villagers out of their houses and slaughtered them. In just one day, they murdered 3,157 villagers, most of whom were elders, women, and children. There were over 100 families that were completely wiped out in Ba Chuc. By July 1978, the Khmer Rouge had killed over 5,000 Vietnamese, injured another 5,000 more, and kidnapped more than 20,000 Vietnamese people to make them slaves in their labor camps. Thousands of schools, hospitals, medical centers, churches, and pagodas near the Kampuchean border were destroyed. About half a million Vietnamese living near the border with Kampuchea had to flee their homes further east to escape the raids of the Khmer Rouge.