Expatriates Vent Anger at Author, Movie Portrayals : Vietnam: Exiles object to writer Le Ly Hayslip’s advocacy of normalization of ties with Communist nation.

They can never forgive or forget. Nor do they want to.

For a small group of expatriate Vietnamese who live in Orange County, to forgive the Communist government that chased them from their homes--leaving family, friends and neighbors dead--is to trample the memory of what once was their nation, the Republic of Vietnam.

The expatriates, who vented their anger at author Le Ly Hayslip in a surprisingly hostile demonstration Jan. 9, said that even after nearly 20 years they must speak out against anyone who supported or worked for the Vietnamese Communists, the Cong San .

“Until the Communists change their philosophy--no, until they leave our country--we can never work with them,” said Chuyen Nguyen, editor and publisher of Tieng Chuong (“Sound of the Bell”), a conservative newspaper in Little Saigon. “And people who say they support normalization are traitors.” The protesters, many of whom were officers in the South Vietnamese army or former political detainees, object to the fact that Hayslip’s personal saga--which includes aiding the Viet Cong--is the subject of Oliver Stone’s latest movie, “Heaven and Earth.”

The protesters, who belong to a variety of Vietnamese American political groups, also say they are bitter that Hayslip and Stone advocate normalization with Hanoi, a position the nationalists adamantly oppose as long as the current regime is in power.

For the last few years, they have been bucking efforts to normalize relations between the United States and Vietnam once the POW-MIA issue is resolved. So far, they said, the battle has been futile.

“Politically, we have no power in our hands. At the national level, we, the Vietnamese community, have no voice,” said Nguyen, whose newspaper recently printed a scathing attack on Hayslip and the movie.

“Oliver Stone and Le Ly Hayslip, they have a loud voice called filmmaking--and what did they do with that voice? They exploited us. They portrayed honorable Republican soldiers who fought for democracy as evil people,” Nguyen said.

“As a movie maker, Oliver Stone used us,” said Nguyen, 44. “As a Vietnamese woman, Le Ly betrayed us.”

The movie has, however, received at least one favorable review in the Vietnamese press and regularly plays--with a dubbed Vietnamese soundtrack--to packed houses at the Thu Do Theater on Westminster Avenue.

In the past, some ardent nationalists have protested and even threatened people who publicly support normalization. Last year, Dr. Co Pham, president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, who hosted a Vietnamese diplomat at his home, received threatening letters and phone calls.

While demonstrations outside Pham’s office did not result in violence, Pham said he feared for his life. He hired a bodyguard and began wearing a bulletproof vest.

The Jan. 9 demonstration against Hayslip was hostile enough that the frightened author canceled her appearance in what she said was an effort to protect her visiting mother and two sisters.

That protest, leaders said, was called because “Heaven and Earth” shamed nationalist soldiers.

“I was an officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,” said Hau Nguyen, president of the Vietnam Political Detainees Mutual Assn., a Southern California support group which sponsors former war prisoners who want to emigrate to the United States. “I spent four years of my life in jail because I fought for what I believed in. We fought for freedom from the communists.”

“And in the movie, that woman tells the world that we are bad men, that we plundered villages and killed the peasants, that we tortured innocent women,” Nguyen said, his voice strained with anger and pain.

Of the dozens of people who protested Hayslip’s appearance, a handful were women who said they objected to what they believe is the reinforcement of the stereotype of Asian women as prostitutes.

“Even as (Hayslip) says that the movie tells of her personal story and she is not speaking for all Vietnamese women in her movie, she and Oliver Stone have promoted it as a movie ‘about the Vietnamese through the eyes of a Vietnamese woman’ ” said Ngoc Anh, 44, a staff writer for Tieng Chuong. “What else are people watching their movie going to think?”

Kim Ha, a Garden Grove author whose own published memoir detailed her escape from Vietnam, said she holds no grudge against Hayslip.

“After watching the movie, I feel so sad for her because she has lost so much,” said Ha, 43. “I praised her for her bravery and her honesty and her determination to overcome the obstacles in her life.

“But what makes me angry,” said Ha, who is currently trying to get her autobiography published in English, “is the fact that she was raised a Communist; her family supported communism. And her books and her movie left a bad impression about the Vietnamese woman.”

Stone erred in his judgment, Ha and others said, when he used Hayslip’s life story and proclaimed it a representation of Vietnamese women who suffered.

“She was pro-Communist; most of us fought against them,” Ha said. “She was a prostitute; most of us were not.”

“There were women who lost their sons, their husbands and those who nursed the wounded through the war without any recognition,” Ha said. “We have all these honorable women. And who is perceived as a symbol of the beautiful Vietnamese woman but an illiterate country woman who spied for the Viet Cong and prostituted herself with the American soldiers?”

The expatriates are enraged that instead of repudiating her political past, Hayslip, with Stone’s support, advocates normalization with the current government in Vietnam.

The protesters said they believe that Hayslip’s East Meets West Foundation is a front organization that attempts to aid the Vietnamese government economically. They claimed Hayslip is using the nonprofit organization to make money for herself.

Because of the divergent views on the normalization debate, the nationalists said they will never let up on their fight against Hayslip, Stone, or anyone who advocates a relationship with the current regime in Vietnam.

“There are things in life that could change,” said Chuyen Nguyen. “On this issue, there is no compromise. . . .”

Hau Nguyen added: “I will never trust anyone who has been in touch with the Communists.”