Dangrek Incident (1979)

The Dangrek Incident was Thailand's forced return of Cambodian refugees across the Dangrek Mountains (ជួរភ្នំដងរែក) in June 1979. Thai forces took the refugees from camps near the border and left them at the mountains, near the Temple of Preah Vihear, where many had to cross land full of landmines.

The Dangrek Mountains seen from Maw I-daeng, Thailand, looking east. Photo: Markalexander100, CC BY-SA 3.0

History details
History type	Historical event
Start	June 1979
End	June 1979
Present-day countries	Cambodia; Thailand
Subjects	History & Remembrance

Background

After the Vietnamese army drove the Khmer Rouge from power in January 1979, about 140,000 Cambodians crossed into Thailand that spring. In the documentary Ghost Mountain: The Second Killing Fields of Cambodia, James Taing says that by June 1979 the Thai government had lost patience with the slow pace of Western action and threatened to send refugees back into Cambodia.

Survivors' accounts

Instead of being registered as refugees, people in the camps were put on buses and driven to the mountain. The businessman Quach Mengly wrote a book about his family's escape. His family spent about a week in a camp in Thailand's Sa Kaeo Province. Thai forces then took them to the Dangrek cliffs, where they had to climb down and cross minefields. Bunseng Taing recalls a bus journey of 14 hours through the night, and soldiers ordering the refugees off at gunpoint and pointing them the way to go. The historian Vong Sotheara said that refugees he spoke with in France told much the same story: they were tricked, driven to the mountains in Thai army trucks, left there and made to walk through mined ground.

The Khmer Times wrote that the place became known as "Ghost Mountain" from the sound of children crying at night.

Numbers

Sources give different numbers, and none has been settled.

• Refugees sent back: The political scientist In Sophal wrote in 2026 that 40,000 to 50,000 refugees were pushed back between June 8 and June 13, 1979. The Cambodia Daily, reporting his post, cites a letter from the International Committee of the Red Cross of June 29, 1979, that gave more than 40,000, and the British journalist William Shawcross, who gave about 50,000. The makers of the Taing documentary give 45,000, CambodgeMag nearly 45,000, and Connecticut Public more than forty thousand.
• Survivors and the dead: The Cambodia Daily cites three records. A letter by the former United States ambassador Morton Abramowitz put the survivors at about 1,000. Records of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, written by Yvette Pierpaoli, gave just over 900. Vietnamese military records said troops rescued 2,000 to 3,000 refugees caught in minefields. In Sophal wrote that thousands died, from landmines and from gunfire when they tried to turn back.

Memory and discussion

In September 2025 the Thai newspaper Khaosod wrote that the abuses by Thai troops in the Dangrek range were deeply shameful for the Thai state. It added that many younger Thais did not know of them. In January 2026 the Thai government criticized Leak Lyda's Cambodian film Ghost Mountain: Second Killing Field, which tells the story of these refugees; Cambodia rejected the criticism, and Cambodian filmmakers and historians defended the film.

Other works on the events include the American documentary Ghost Mountain: The Second Killing Fields of Cambodia by James Taing and Virginia Lynch Dean, which follows Bunseng Taing. Quach Mengly's book Dangrek Mountain… Unforgettable came out in 2018. In January 2026 a Cambodian company began filming a documentary based on it, The Tragedy of Ghost Mountain.

References