Nonprofit Vietnamese Group Raises $7,000 Despite Protest

Despite protesters who prevented some singers from performing Sunday, a nonprofit Vietnamese group was able to raise about $7,000 from a concert whose proceeds will be used to help disabled children in Vietnam and an Orange County foundation build a war memorial here.

Big Dai Ngo, president of the Mountain View-based Indochinese American Volunteer Organization, said Monday he was disappointed that the protesters would “mistakenly” believe that money sent to help poor, disabled children in Vietnam would be used to support the country’s Communist government.

Ngo said his group held a similar concert in San Francisco in January and that event had garnered much support. “It definitely wasn’t the kind of reception we received in Orange County Sunday,” he said.

The 1995 Vietnamese Music Festival, held at the Donald R. Wash Memorial Auditorium in Garden Grove, featured many well-known performers and composers. The money raised will go to orphanages in Vietnam, to Vietnamese veterans groups and to the Vietnam Monument to Freedom Foundation, which is working to build a memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

Unfortunately, organizers said, the 300 protesters who showed up outside the auditorium so intimidated some of the singers that they left the concert without performing. Many people who bought tickets to the event also decided against attending the concert when the vocal demonstrators approached them.

The Committee for Just Cause of Free Vietnam, the Westminster group that organized the protest, could not be reached Monday for comment. Sponsors of the festival, which included Westminster Councilman Tony Lam, said they believed the organizers evoked the ire of protesters when they acknowledged in their brochure the support of Dr. Co Pham, president of the Orange County Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce.

In the past, Pham has stoked the wrath of many anti-Communist activists in the community because he advocates a working relationship with the Vietnamese government. By publicly recognizing Pham, the protesters may have concluded that the festival must therefore be supporting the Communist regime.

Pham could not be reached for comment Monday.

Lam and others on the memorial foundation lambasted the protesters Monday and vowed to continue their ongoing efforts to raise money for the war monument, despite threats of future demonstrations.

“I feel the intimidation of a charity event is something that shouldn’t have happened,” Lam said. “I will not back down one inch in my efforts to have this monument built, and I am against the intimidation tactics and fanatical efforts of people who protest humanitarian charities.”