O.C. Doctor Paying Price for Free Speech : Trade: Immigrant urges lifting of U.S. sanctions against Vietnam. He refuses to bow to death threats, public protest.

They made death threats against him, so Dr. Co Pham wears a bulletproof vest and employs a full-time, armed bodyguard.

They hurled rocks and spit curses at him, so Pham no longer uses the front door to his obstetrical practice in Little Saigon.

They reviled him as a “traitor”; now he unconsciously winces every time he hears the word.

Despite the controversy, the 50-year-old Pham, a respected physician and business leader who helped found the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and now is its president, passionately vows that he will continue to advocate lifting the economic embargo against Vietnam so U.S. companies can do business there.

In so doing, Pham has become the embodiment of a political debate that has divided Vietnamese communites across the nation: Eighteen years after the most painful war in American history, should the United States normalize relations with the communist government of Vietnam or insist first that it move toward democracy?

Pham initially earned the enmity of Vietnamese nationalists in the county when he wrote to then-President George Bush in 1989, calling for the lifting of economic sanctions. But harassing phone calls and occasional death threats over the years turned into public protests two weeks ago when hundreds of people demonstrated for three days outside Pham’s Westminster practice in protest of his view.

Pham, a South Vietnamese army lieutenant when he, his wife and 2-month-old son fled their homeland the very day in 1975 when it fell finally into communist hands, understands well the emotional conflict. But he believes that opening trade between the nations would now benefit all Vietnamese people.

“The Vietnamese at home need and want a better life,” said Pham, who immigrated to Orange County and now lives in Huntington Beach. “They won’t get it if the Vietnamese in this country don’t work together to get the economy over there started again.”

In an interview last week, the soft-spoken, articulate physician said he wants people in his homeland to be able to rebuild their lives the same way he rebuilt his in the United States.

Pham and his wife and young son came to Orange County in 1975 and settled in what eventually become the Little Saigon district. While his wife stayed here to take care of their young children--the couple now have three sons and a daughter--Pham returned to medical school for recertification, first studying at Northwestern University, then completing his residency at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Financially strapped during those early years, Pham would work as a waiter at different restaurants to help pay his medical school bills.

Once their children were older, Pham’s wife, Bui also attended medical school. The couple now jointly operate a practice in Westminster. Pham declined to discuss their financial status other than to say, “We are very well off. I work hard so my children could have whatever they want, and there’s nothing much that we can’t afford for them.”

He also politely refused to talk in detail about his wife and children to protect their privacy.

As Little Saigon grew in the 1980s, Pham became more involved in the community’s efforts to promote the commercial district to tourists as Orange County’s counterpart to Los Angeles’ Chinatown. He was also instrumental in launching the county’s then-largest Tet festival in 1989 and led the following year’s even more successful Tet celebration.

Pham is also well-known in the medical community. He serves on the board of directors at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center and until recently was president of the Vietnamese-American Physicians Assn.

Pham’s outspoken views on normalization are especially controversial because he is such a leading figure in the Vietnamese community. But the tension between him and many other Vietnamese nationalists erupted into public demonstrations after Pham met with a Vietnamese Communist diplomat, Bang V. Le, at his home in August and took Le and his entourage on a tour through Little Saigon.

After the daylong visit, Pham bought a full-page advertisement in a local Vietnamese-language newspaper to dispel what he called “false rumors” that he had begun to work with the Communists.

“I am not a Communist, and I have never done business with the Communists,” Pham said. “But I do believe that the time has come for us to work together for the good of the people.”

Many nationalists interpreted the advertisement as implicit support for the Communist regime. In reply to the advertisement, hundreds of people joined in the rallies outside his Westminster practice, hurling epithets and calling for the boycott of his business.

“He has literally shaken hands with the Communists, and that is something we could never accept from someone in our community, especially someone with his stature,” said Chuyen Nguyen, a former pilot with the South Vietnam air force. “He’s just trying to benefit his own pocket, and we consider him a traitor to the Vietnamese refugee community.”

Pham brushed aside similar charges. “I’m a doctor,” he replied with a touch of annoyance. “How will I benefit personally? Many people will benefit, yes. But the ones who will get the most from business are the ones who need it the most--the Vietnamese people” in Vietnam.

Pham and his family are aware that his position on the embargo and the August meeting with Le may have placed him in danger. “Everyone must die one day,” Pham said wearily. “I’m no martyr; I don’t want to be a martyr. But I will not be intimidated into quitting.”

But he and some others in the community also say the days of rampant politically motivated violence in Little Saigon are gone.

Yen Do, the editor of Nguoi Viet, a politically moderate Vietnamese daily newspaper, said this week that he sees a more “progressive movement” in the community heading in the “moderate view direction.”

“Dr. Co is not naive politically,” Do said. “It is dangerous, what he did, yes. But, the mood here has changed in the past few years. If he had done what he did--meet with a Communist official--five years ago, he would not be alive.”

“Of course, the more moderate mood doesn’t change the fact that the more vocal people are the ones who oppose Dr. Co because his view clashes with theirs,” Do added.

Several other Vietnamese community leaders privately support Pham but fear that saying so publicly will draw the same kind of violent reaction that the doctor now faces.

The most visible leader in Little Saigon is Westminster City Councilman Tony Lam, who last year became the country’s first elected Vietnamese official. Lam could not be reached last week for comment about Pham or the community’s latest reaction to his views.

Staunch nationalists believe that unless there is an absolute guarantee of basic human rights, any business relationship with Vietnam would benefit only the Communist regime and foreign businesses, not citizens there. They also call for a civil war in Vietnam and the overthrow of the current government.

Pham argues that years of such beliefs have brought no change and has done nothing to topple the Communist government, even as most Vietnamese in the country languish in poverty.

“We’ve waited for democracy for the last 18 years, and where did it get us? Where did it get the people in Vietnam?” the physician asked, gesturing excitedly from behind an oak desk in his small office, which is appointed with portraits of him shaking hands with President Bush and Gov. Pete Wilson. “I’m growing old and I want to see changes in my country before I die. We’ve tried it the other way. Let’s try my way.”

Pham’s way is to establish businesses and factories in Vietnam that would build the country’s almost nonexistent roads, modernize housing and bring education, jobs and economic stability to the people of what today is one of the world’s poorest countries.

A sound economy in the country, Pham believes, would succeed where war and politics have failed, providing human rights and dignity and bringing about democracy.

Perhaps Pham is right in his reasoning, some Vietnamese-Americans in the community said privately, although their concession was given only on condition of anonymity. But some also criticized his outspokenness, saying Pham should be more sensitive to the feelings of the refugees who have seen their families torn apart and their country destroyed by the same government with whom the doctor now advocates developing a working relationship.

“I understand the pain of the people who protested in front of my office,” Pham replied. “I, too, have seen loss and death during the war--children and women crying in the street, friends and co-workers dying in front of my eyes, bodies floating in the sea and soldiers whose arms and legs were amputated. As a doctor, I’ve seen more than my share of the atrocities of war.”

“I have also lost my country and had to rebuild my life from scratch,” he continued. “How could I not know what they are going through?”

But, he added, those who have begun new lives here and elsewhere must think about the destitution of their compatriots at home.

“They should have the same opportunities we have,” he said “and the quickest and safest way is through economic stability.”