WESTMINSTER : 200 Protest Group’s Plan for Vietnam

More than 200 Vietnamese-Americans gathered in Little Saigon on Sunday to denounce a private group’s plan for normalizing relations with Hanoi, charging the proposal allows the Communist government to maintain a “monopoly” of power.

“This is a sellout for our people,” said Dr. Huu Dinh Vo, national co-chairman of the Vietnamese-American Community, USA.

Any realistic plan for normalization, Vo said, would have to include respect for human rights, release of all political prisoners, disbanding the Communist Party and replacing it in a multi-party election supervised by the United Nations.

The six-stage plan being protested was advanced by Minneapolis attorney Stephen B. Young for the International Committee for a Free Vietnam. It calls for “the gradual removal of the Communist Party from a dictatorial dominance over the government, the army, the police, religions and society.”

At the same time, Young’s proposal--expected to be completed by 1997--”looks toward the emergence of private-sector organizations before the surrender of dictatorial power,” during which “informal political groupings . . . can then evolve into political parties to contest elections.”

Several of the signs and speakers denounced four local Vietnamese supporters of the plan, but Diem H. Do, a spokesman for the demonstrators, said: “I don’t really blame (Young) personally. What I’m personally upset about is that this is a scheme by the Vietnamese Communist Party.”

Demonstration organizers also charged that Nguyen Dinh Huy, an opposition leader imprisoned by Hanoi for 13 years, was being used as a pawn by the Vietnamese government to advance the Young plan.

Young’s family in Minneapolis said he was traveling Sunday night and was unavailable for comment.

A number of demonstrators suggested that some U.S. corporations, eager to invest in Vietnam, supported Young’s proposal for economic reasons.

“We don’t blame American business people,” said Duc Thanh-Phong Tran. “They’re in business to make money. They’re not interested in human rights. We’re sophisticated enough to understand this.”

However, Hoan Vu, of Westminster, chairman of the executive council of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, said U.S. companies will not benefit from normalization under the Young plan, because “political and social stability are a necessary foundation for economic stability.”

More than half a dozen speakers addressed the crowd in the parking lot in front of the Bolsa Station Post Office, including a spokesman for Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who was involved in founding the International Committee for a Free Vietnam.

In a letter read to the crowd, Dornan said that he did not endorse the Young plan. “It is naive to believe that the Communists would ever agree to a plan that would lead to their voluntarily relinquishing power,” he wrote.

As chilly winds whipped their small Vietnamese and American flags in the sunshine, the chanting, sign-carrying demonstrators marched down Bolsa Avenue.