Thayer Consultancy Background Brief

ABN # 65 648 097 123

Vietnam Exhuming Mass Graves
of War Dead in Cambodia?
November 23, 2018

On a recent trip to Cambodia, one of our contacts mentioned that the Vietnamese
government has started exhuming some of the mass graves of Vietnamese war dead.
Can you put this report in context?

ANSWER: First, what is meant by "mass graves"? In ordinary usage mass grave refers
to multiple corpses in one burial site. The United Nations considers a criminal mass
grave as a burial site for three or more victims who were executed.
I am uncertain about Vietnamese military policy with respect to battlefield
causalities during the Cambodian conflict. The Vietnamese military may have buried
soldiers who were killed in action in a mass grave(s) at a central site within a
particular unit’s area of operations and marked the location on military maps. After
Vietnam’s initial invasion in late 1978, Vietnamese forces subsequently fought a
counter-insurgency that would have generated relatively small numbers of casualties
at each encounter.
Vietnam has a long-standing policy to recover the remains of "fallen martyrs" (liệt sĩ
quân đội), Vietnamese soldiers who died fighting against the Khmer Rouge from late
1978-September 1989. Joint efforts have been made between the Royal Cambodian
Armed Forces and the Vietnam People's Army to locate and recover these remains.
Judging from reports in Quân Đội Nhân Dân (People's Army newspaper) only a
handful of remains have been repatriated following each recovery mission. What
follows are excerpts from recent press reports:
 The remains of 98 volunteer soldiers who were buried in Kratie and Kampong
Cham provinces were repatriated to Vietnam, according to the Binh Phuoc
Province Military Command. The remains of another 205 Vietnamese soldiers are
still in these provinces (People’s Army Newspaper Online, September 26, 2016).
 Twenty-one sets of remains of Vietnamese soldiers who died in Cambodia were
repatriated to Long An province, Vietnam, during the 2016-17 dry season. From
2001-02 dry season until the 2016-17 dry season, 4,131 sets of remains have
been returned to Vietnam (People’s Army Newspaper Online, June 26, 2017).
 During the 2016-17 dry season, 267 remains of Vietnamese soldiers were
repatriated from Cambodia’s Kandal and Kampong Chhnang provinces to
Vietnam’s Military Region 9 (People’s Army Newspaper Online, October 1, 2017).
 2

 During the 2016-17 dry season, 29 remains of Vietnamese soldiers were

repatriated from Cambodia’s Rattanakiri, Preah Vihear and Stung Treng
provinces to Vietnam’s Gia Lai province. This report notes that the Gia Lai
province Missing-in-Action (MIA) search team was stood up in 2001 (People’s
Army Newspaper Online, October 18, 2017).
 During the 2016-17 dry season, 10 remains of Vietnamese soldiers were
repatriated from Cambodia’s Rattanakiri province to Vietnam’s Kon Tum
province (People’s Army Newspaper Online, May 26, 2018).
 The remains of 21 Vietnamese soldiers were repatriated from Cambodia’s
Ratanakiri, Preah Vihear and Stung Treng provinces to Vietnam’s Gia Lai province
(People’s Army Newspaper Online, May 27, 2018).
 On October 15, 2018 a cooperation agreement was reached between Oddar
Meanchey province, Cambodia, and the Steering Board of Vietnam’s Tay Ninh
province, for future MIA recovery efforts in Tbong Khmum, Kompong Cham, Siem
Reap, Banteay Meanchey and Oddar Meanchey provinces.
 On October 18, 2018, the 17th meeting of the Vietnam-Cambodia Special
Working Committees met in Ho Chi Minh City and agreed to intensify
cooperation in the search for Vietnamese MIAs in 2018-19. During the 2017-18
dry season, Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities conducted joint searches for
the remains of 690 Vietnamese soldiers who died during the Cambodian conflict.
(People’s Army Online, October 18, 2018).

Suggested citation: Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam Exhuming Mass Graves of War Dead
in Cambodia?,” Thayer Consultancy Background Brief, November 23, 2018. All
background briefs are posted on Scribd.com (search for Thayer). To remove yourself
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Thayer Consultancy provides political analysis of current regional security issues and
other research support to selected clients. Thayer Consultancy was officially
registered as a small business in Australia in 2002.