COMMENTARY : Vietnamese Need to Shake Off Fear, Strike Back at Oppressors

By any objective standard, when one thinks of America’s newest refugee community, superlatives mostly come to mind. “Hard-working, industrious, well-educated, grateful and successful” have all been rightly earned adjectives for describing the Vietnamese-American community.

Calling them political prisoners would seem a tragic epithet from a yesteryear. Yet many Vietnamese-Americans are today quietly suffering, and wrongly acquiescing, to an oppressor not nearly as obvious as their Communist dictators were but no less effective in denying them basic political freedoms of expression and press.

Within Orange County’s Little Saigon community, a new “internal security force” today operates with near-impunity. It is fiendish, secretive, pervasive and deadly. It extorts from its victims neither money nor “protection,” but silence and submission. It cloaks itself in the righteous call for an end to the communist domination of Vietnam.

Yet it employs the very same totalitarian tools of fear, intimidation, violence and death against any in this Orange County community who might deviate from its twisted interpretation of how this goal ought to be achieved. And by its every act it mocks the constitutional protections generously extended by its adopted home. It is nothing but a band of thugs and shakedown artists unworthy of any association with freedom-fighting movements around the world.

While their specific identities are somewhat uncertain, that they indeed exist has long been known by many within the publicly silent leadership of the Vietnamese community. (They have adopted ridiculous, fascist-sounding names like the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation.) The FBI and local law enforcement take them very seriously. Their record of assassinations, arson fires, vandalism, death threats, beatings and bombings warrants no less.

Now their target is Yen Ngoc Do, editor of Nguoi Viet Daily, one of Little Saigon’s largest and most influential newspapers. They have charged him with pro-Hanoi sympathies and sentenced him to death by Monday--the 15th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

I have been acquainted with Do, his newspaper and his television show for many years, and the charges are absurd. He is a constant critic of Hanoi and a stalwart anti-communist. That, however, is beside the point.

The Vietnamese-American community not only has an obligation to fight for the restoration of freedom lost in Vietnam but also to defend the freedom returned to them in America.

In this effort, they have not been completely forthright.

For too long many have knowingly ignored widespread corruption, extortion, acts of political terrorism and wholesale violations of the travel and export ban with Vietnam.

For understandable but wholly unacceptable reasons, many in the Vietnamese community have not always been cooperative with U.S. law enforcement and other government agencies. “Government,” per se, has not always proved itself worthy of that support. Like most Third World victims, the Vietnamese view “government” with fear, disdain or, at best, indifference.

More specifically, the Vietnamese blame “government” for the loss of their republic. This attitude prevents them from cooperating in such simple things as a census count to the more serious investigations into political terrorism. Regrettably, they forget this is the United States and not Vietnam.

Where are their leaders and statesmen speaking out against those who threaten the lives of their free-thinking intellectuals, authors, community leaders and newspaper editors?

Where are the rallies, the protests?

Where are the brave men and women who would step up, point fingers and kick out those who are mugging their First Amendment rights?

For that matter, where are those great American-born civil rights advocates and organizations who should be standing at the side of this Vietnamese-American community demanding justice for our newest citizens?

In all important respects, Do is no different from Salman Rushdie, threatened with death by extremists unless he toes their line.

Shortly after the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said to the American people: “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. . . . The second is freedom to worship. . . . The third is freedom from want. . . . The fourth is freedom from fear.”

Enough is enough, Little Saigon. You have excelled economically. It is time to mature politically.

For Yen Ngoc Do, for those victimized and killed before him, and for all those now frozen by fear from exercising free expression, it is time to declare war, retake your community and enjoy all the freedoms of America.