Envoy to Vietnam Urged to Focus on Rights Issues

Ngan Nguyen left Saigon in April 1975 and has not returned. She didn’t even go back when her father died seven years ago or when her mother passed away two years later.

“I left my country for my freedom, but the Communists are controlling the country,” said Nguyen, a resident of Santa Ana. “There’s no way I’d go back now.”

But Nguyen still cares deeply about the people of Vietnam, especially her five brothers and sisters still living in what is now Ho Chi Minh City. So on Tuesday, she joined 70 other Vietnamese Americans at the Garden Grove Community Center to meet the new U.S. ambassador to their homeland.

Douglas “Pete” Peterson faced a tough crowd.

For nearly two hours, speakers from the audience urged the ambassador to make his first priority the human rights struggles of the Asian nation. Spend more time finding American soldiers still listed as missing in action, they said, and improving education and health care. Focus less on trade and diplomatic relations with the government in power.

“We love our country, we love our people; however, we hate the Communist government,” said Duc Do, a resident of La Palma.

Religious persecution, crumbling roads and other infrastructure, and unfair labor practices are all impediments to prosperity in Vietnam, Xuyen Suzie Dong-Matsuda of Santa Ana told the ambassador.

Peterson said those issues top his agenda.

“There isn’t a single meeting that I [have] with any official in Vietnam where human rights isn’t brought up,” he said. “This is not an issue that is sitting there growing moss.”

But “without investment in Vietnam, you’re not going to raise the quality of life,” he said.

“The economic engine will empower the people. I am here to tell you I’m going to support investment in Vietnam across the board.”

Peterson’s visit to Orange County--home to the largest U.S. community of Vietnamese expatriates--was his first since he was named ambassador in May. He is scheduled to participate in a forum today in Los Angeles before heading to San Jose tonight.

Despite his short tenure as ambassador, Peterson could not be more familiar with Vietnam. A U.S. Air Force pilot, he was shot down and captured in 1966 during a combat mission and was held in several prisons until 1973. Over the years, he said, he has made peace with Vietnam.

His experiences there garnered respect from some who came to see him Tuesday.

“He’s a hero,” said Chau Tue Carey of Garden Grove. “He has come back to go face to face with his former enemy.”

With tears in her eyes, Madalenna Lai of Pomona presented Peterson with a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers in honor of “all the people who died for Vietnam.”

The forum was arranged in part by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who has met privately with Peterson to discuss diplomatic and trade relations between the United States and Vietnam. She had urged him to come to Orange County and speak directly with her constituents, and she stood with him to greet them.

“I wanted him to hear and see these issues,” Sanchez said. “They should be somewhere in the policy-making role,” she said of the local Vietnamese community.

Though many turned out Tuesday convinced that Peterson’s main concerns are trade and economic, they came away saying that the ambassador seemed receptive to their views.

“He has to do his job, but he knows what we want,” said Quyen Le, a resident of Rowland Heights.