Long Beach
Several hundred Cambodian-Americans burned Vietnamese and Soviet flags outside City Hall on Saturday, protesting a Christmas Day attack by Vietnamese troops and tank units on the largest guerrilla resistance camp on the Thai-Cambodian border.
The hour-long rally started with a march down Ocean Boulevard from Pacific Avenue to City Hall, said one of the demonstration’s organizers, Edward Chey, a Norwalk social worker who came to the United States in 1972.
“It’s shameful and hurtful that it happened on Christmas Day when the world celebrates peace,” Chey said. “Cambodian children and families received guns, killing and shelling.”
Chey said the protest also was aimed at the Vietnamese-installed government in Cambodia. “They force us to use the Vietnamese language and they try to change our culture via intermarriage,” Chey said. “I am an American citizen now, but I cannot forget what’s going on in my native country.”
Long Beach was the site of the demonstration, Chey said, because more than 10,000 Cambodians live in the city, which is becoming known as “Little Phnom Penh.”
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