Vietnamese in O.C. Angry and Skeptical

Activists across the political spectrum in Orange County’s Vietnamese community reacted skeptically and at times angrily Monday to the prospect of a new U.S. move toward normalized relations with their homeland.

With near unanimity, local leaders said that an end to the fighting in Cambodia between the Vietnamese-sponsored government and other local factions would not be enough to quell their resentment and dissatisfaction with the Communist regime in Vietnam.

“Peace in Cambodia is fine, but what about the people of Vietnam?” demanded Mai Cong, who heads a Santa Ana-based social services center called the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc. “That is my first question.”

U.S. representatives are set to meet today in New York City with Vietnamese diplomats to put forth a new plan for normalizing economic and diplomatic relations with Vietnam, hinging on a quick peace settlement in Cambodia.

There is little suggestion that internal political reform from Hanoi will be part of the U.S. proposal.

But local Vietnamese leaders said Monday that greater freedom of religion and expression for the citizens of Vietnam, a return of property seized by the government during the war, and the release of political prisoners should all be issues put on the table before the United States lifts its trade ban against Vietnam or opens diplomatic relations.

The Orange County community of roughly 100,000 Vietnamese--the largest outside Vietnam--”will be watching this very closely,” said Frank Jao, a major developer in Little Saigon who plans to call his congressman’s office to try to get word on the developments. “We’ll want to find out as much as we can as early as we can.”

What with many local refugees leaving family and friends in their homeland, the issue of U.S. policy toward Vietnam is as emotional as it is controversial. Even among those who may privately favor normalized relations, few have been willing to speak out publicly for fear of attack by right-wing extremists, who have targeted “Communist sympathizers” in the past.

“It’s a very sensitive issue for the Vietnamese refugee,” Cong conceded.

Indeed, some Vietnamese leaders suggested that more than any other issue, the normalization question has forced local refugees to choose sides between their adopted homeland and the war-ravaged nation they left behind.

“I serve two countries,” said Co D.L. Pham, a local physician who is president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce of Orange County. “I want to pay back the U.S.A., which has saved my life and my family, but I want to help the people in Vietnam against the Communists.”

Opening relations with Vietnam now would do little to help those people, insisted Pham, who describes himself as a political moderate.

“If we have normalizations right now, I think it’s too soon,” he said.

“The Bush Administration has never asked the Vietnamese-Americans’ opinion on the issue. We have no objections against normalization, but we wish the Administration would have some preconditions--more human rights, more freedoms,” Co said.

“A peace settlement in Cambodia is not enough,” he added. “And I think the majority of the Vietnamese community would be very angry” if relations are normalized now, he said. “They would accept it, they’ve predicted it, but they would be angry.”

Yen Do, editor of Nguoi Viet Daily News in Orange County, one of the biggest Vietnamese newspapers in the nation, said he sees “many signals from Vietnam that the Communist government is not ready yet for reconciliation. . . . I am very pessimistic about the near future.”

And Chuyen V. Nguyen, secretary of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a right-wing political organization that includes many ex-military people, was even stronger in his skepticism.

“They’ve already lied to America and the whole world,” he said of the Vietnamese government. And if the United States agrees to normalized relations now based on a false pretense of peace in Cambodia, he warned, “America will be cheated again.”

Citing the deep poverty that grips the people of Vietnam, Nguyen predicted that free trade with the West would aid only the Communist government and “strengthen your enemy.”

Nguyen added: “This is not the first time that the U.S. and Vietnam have tried to mend their differences, but now the Vietnamese community as a whole in Orange County is afraid that one of these days, it (normalization) is going to happen.”