O.C. Vietnamese Want Guarantee of Rights First

Some leaders of Orange County’s Vietnamese community are wary of President Clinton’s plan to open trade with their homeland, saying they want assurances that lifting the embargo will be tied to a promise of improved civil liberties in Vietnam.

Some residents and politicians worry that the United States is bowing too quickly to a former enemy. Others, namely in the business community, welcome the prospect of a new market overseas.

Phong Duc Tran of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California said he is certain that if the United States begins trading with Vietnam, “many refugees will feel . . . as if the U.S. is supporting the Communists.”

He said his organization will continue to oppose ending the embargo. “We are not going to surrender to the Communists just like that,” he said.

After the U.S. Senate voted 62-38 Thursday in favor of a non-binding resolution to end the ban on American trade and investment with Vietnam, Tran said he believes the Senate was pressured by American business people bent on lifting the embargo “to make some dollars.”

Ban Binh Bui, who recently was elected president of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, said President Clinton could lose support among Vietnamese Americans if he lifts the trade ban without first obtaining a guarantee of greater democracy in Vietnam.

“I hope what President Clinton learns is that as a condition of lifting the embargo, that there has to be human rights and democracy,” Bui said.

Barbara Robertson, a Santa Ana woman whose husband disappeared behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War, said she wants all living U.S. veterans in Vietnam returned to their families before any deal opening trade is made.

“We feel it is our last bargaining chip to get our men home,” said Robertson, who believes that her husband, Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson, whose jet was shot down over Vietnam in 1966, may still be held by the Communist regime there.

“Every politician, starting with (former Secretary of State Henry) Kissinger, has sold our POWs down the river and (the Senate’s action) has really sunk the boat,” she said. “It demonstrates a very cavalier attitude toward our fighting men.”

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Some Orange County business owners, including some Vietnamese Americans, say free trade could benefit both the United States and Vietnam and even foster democracy for the people of Vietnam.

Wai Szeto, vice president of corporate development in Asia for Irvine-based AST Research Inc., one of the nation’s largest computer manufacturers, said the opening of trade with Vietnam could help sustain the company’s leadership in China and Hong Kong.

“Vietnam is geographically very close to Hong Kong,” he said. “For us to tap into this emerging market is very convenient for us.”

Vietnam could also prove an important market for Beckman Instruments, a major Fullerton-based manufacturer of medical and scientific research equipment, company spokeswoman Elke Eastman said.

She said that removing the political barriers to trade will allow U.S. firms such as Beckman a chance to trade in a country where Japanese and European companies already are doing business.

“It does represent a market with a chance for Beckman,” Eastman said. “We look forward to supply the major hospitals in Vietnam with instruments and chemistries.”

Co Pham, president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County and the president of a building management company, said, “A lot of American businesses want to expand business in Vietnam. It would be the only way to forget the past, to help resolve the MIA issue and help Vietnamese (in the United States) export jobs and goods to Vietnam.”

Pham said a trade agreement would cut down black market trade. “A lot of Vietnamese (in the United States) have been doing business with Vietnam illegally,” using alternate trade routes, he said.

Once free trade is allowed, Pham said, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce could serve as “the bridge” between American companies and prospective Southeast Asian customers.

“We see our role as very important,” Pham said. “In the long run, it will bring the Vietnamese people toward democracy.”

But two members of Orange County’s congressional delegation denounced the Senate’s action.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), whose district includes part of Orange County’s Little Saigon, said some of his “best friends” in the Senate wrongly voted to lift the embargo “to heal the wounds of war.”

But Dornan said the majority of senators were unknowingly motivated by “racism” because they ignored the overwhelming opposition of Vietnamese Americans.

Dornan also alleged that the Senate was unduly influenced by a few businessmen who want to take what Dornan perceives as the great “risk” of doing business with the government of Vietnam.

The senators “are putting dirty money against the pleading of the missing-in-action families who are totally against it,” Dornan said.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) criticized U.S. negotiators for not using economic leverage to win more human rights concessions from the Vietnam government.

“As the largest market in the world and the most attractive trading partner, the United States has a strong bargaining position,” Cox said.

“It is very easy to find instances in California and throughout the country where individual firms can profit from the lifting of this embargo. That is all to the good, but misses the point of whether the United States has negotiated to its best advantage.”

Cox condemned the Vietnam government as “among the worst violators of civil liberties and human rights in the entire world” and complained that while the United States government has discussed the POW-MIA issue in negotiations leading to the lifting of the trade embargo, it “simply dropped the ball” regarding civil rights violations. “Our policy has no consistent human rights focus,” he said.

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Tony Lam, mayor pro-tem of Westminster and the owner of Vien Dong Restaurant in Garden Grove, said he has mixed feelings about ending the embargo.

“I don’t know if it will be beneficial to the people of Vietnam,” he said. “Let’s cross our fingers that it would be beneficial to both countries.”

Lam said he wants to know more about the details of the plan to lift the trade embargo, especially whether it will honor the Vietnamese American community’s demands for the protection of human rights and releasing of political prisoners. “If we don’t have any voice in the future of our homeland, it seems unfair,” he said.

Times staff writers Chris Woodyard, Elaine Tassy and Aileen Cho contributed to this report.