No Refuge for Refugee : Some in Community Threaten Him for Saying U.S., Vietnam Should Resume Trade

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, so now he unconsciously winces every time he hears the word.

Pham, a respected 50-year-old physician and president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, is under siege by many members of Orange County’s Vietnamese community because he passionately advocates lifting America’s economic embargo against Vietnam, a change that would permit U.S. companies to do business there.

He embodies a political question that divides Vietnamese communities across the nation: Eighteen years after the painful war ended, should the United States normalize relations with Vietnam’s Communist government, a regime bitterly opposed by so many refugees? Or should the United States insist that Vietnam first move toward democracy?

Pham initially earned the enmity of Vietnamese nationalists in this county when he wrote to then-President George Bush in 1989, calling for the lifting of economic sanctions.

In the following years, his actions brought him harassing phone calls and occasional death threats from fellow refugees.

Then, three weeks ago, hundreds of Vietnamese demonstrated for three days outside Pham’s Westminster office.

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

“The Vietnamese at home need and want a better life,” said Pham, who 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.”

Pham and his family came to Orange County and settled in what became Little Saigon. While his wife stayed here to take care of their children (the couple 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 worked as a waiter to help pay his medical school bills.

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 next year’s even more successful celebration.

The tension between him and many other Vietnamese nationalists erupted into public demonstrations after Pham met with a Vietnamese Communist diplomat, Bang V. Le, 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 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 the 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.

Yen Do, editor of Nguoi Viet, a politically moderate Vietnamese daily newspaper, said that if Pham had met with a Communist official five years ago, “he would not be alive.” Today, however, there is a more moderate, progressive movement in Little Saigon, Do said.

Several Vietnamese community leaders support Pham, but fear that saying so publicly will draw the same violent reaction that the doctor faces.

The most militant nationalists argue that unless there is an absolute guarantee of basic human rights in Vietnam, any American business relationship would benefit only the Communist regime and foreign businesses, not citizens there.