Protesters Try to Bar Crowd From Concert

About 300 shouting anti-Communist protesters tried to dissuade concert-goers from attending a Sunday afternoon performance intended to raise money to send to Vietnam for orphans and other children in need.

Amid pushing and shoving, the protesters contended that funds raised by the event would be channeled through the Communist Vietnamese government, meaning there is no guarantee it will reach targeted orphans and ill children.

Dozens of people, mostly members of the local Vietnamese community, were persuaded not to enter the 1995 Vietnamese Music Festival, but about 100 did pass through the protesters’ ranks and enter the Garden Grove Unified School District’s Donald R. Wash Memorial Auditorium to listen to a concert featuring native Vietnamese music.

Bryan Ngo, son of the event’s organizer, said the protesters didn’t understand that the concert promoters have the same ideological goals as the dissidents: to see the overthrow of the Vietnamese Communist government.

“We stopped selling tickets because people were protesting,” said Ngo, who identified himself as a law student from Los Angeles and son of the event’s organizer, Dai Cam Ngo. The elder Ngo is president of the Indochinese American Volunteer Organization, which was described as a nonprofit group based in Mountain View.

“We’re basically supporting what they are supporting--the overthrow of the Communist regime in Vietnam,” the younger Ngo said. “Their anger is misplaced.”

Anger was evident about 3 p.m. when people began arriving at the auditorium, on the campus of Garden Grove High School and only one block from the Garden Grove Police Department headquarters.

Private security guard Jim Roundtree, who was stationed at the entrance to the auditorium, said that there was much pushing and shoving but that no one was injured in the confrontations outside the building.

Protesters, most of them of Vietnamese heritage, emotionally explained to concert-goers their belief that the concert would benefit Communists in Vietnam, not disadvantaged children.

“We came from Seattle . . . to buy a ticket,” said Tung Tran, who immigrated to the United States 20 years ago, when South Vietnam fell to the Communists.

Tran said the protesters persuaded him not to attend the concert as he approached the auditorium. “They tried to convince me not to go . . . and maybe they are right,” he said.

Garden Grove police, who stationed officers in the immediate vicinity, said that when the event ended at 6 p.m., there was some jeering but no violence as the concert audience left the building.

Khanh Phuong Nguyen, who described herself as a financial sponsor of the event, left midway through the program and spoke briefly to protesters outside.

She explained that she had raised questions about the program with its organizers but had not gotten satisfactory answers, so she decided to leave, which drew loud cheers from the protesters. Nguyen said she had donated $1,500 to support the concert.

“I think (the situation) is unclear,” Nguyen told a reporter. “I don’t want to get into the politics.”