Vietnam commemorates My Lai massacre

Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, when U.S. troops sacked a city and killed 504 unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. Provincial official Dang Ngoc Dung said at a ceremony in the town of My Lai that the massacre was a typical case of “cruel crimes committed by aggressive and hostile forces” during the war. He did not name the United States but said Vietnam wants to set aside the past and work toward a better, peaceful future. The United States is now one of Vietnam’s top trading partners and investors, and relations between the two countries have expanded to security and defense. Since the war, churches in Vietnam have grown even amid government persecution, and since 1975, the evangelical population in Vietnam has multiplied nearly tenfold from 160,000 to 1.57 million, June Cheng reports in the latest issue of WORLD Magazine.