Photo, Flag Back Up at Video Shop

Police held back hundreds of raging protesters in Little Saigon on Saturday as a defiant and emotional store owner carried out his promise to put back up a Vietnamese flag and photo of the late Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

In a heated confrontation just before Truong Van Tran arrived to post the hated symbols, police arrested 11 protesters who tried to charge through a line of officers, said Westminster police Lt. Bill Lewis. The arrest tally later reached 31, all taken to jail and released with citations for interfering with officers.

After the morning’s confrontation between police and protesters, the demonstration reduced to a rolling boil for the afternoon. But police called for reinforcements after a noisy flare-up outside the store about 10 p.m. By 11 p.m. the crowd had grown to 8,000, police estimated.

About 400 officers armed with pepper spray and batons stood ready to keep protesters from crossing a barrier set up outside the store, and some of the activists joined hands in a chain to keep the demonstration from surging forward.

Among those arrested in the earlier demonstration was a woman who carried one child and pushed another in a stroller that she used as a battering ram, police said. She will also face charges of child endangerment, Lewis said.

Tran arrived with a police escort at 9:40 a.m. on a day when the largest of the community’s Tet celebrations was planned. Tran and his wife, Kim Thi Nguyen, entered the store to paste up the flag and picture against the back wall of his video store. The two knelt and bowed reverentially to the photo, but afterward Tran denied that he was a Communist.

“I’m not against the Vietnamese community,” he said tearfully. “Why don’t they understand me? I would like to help build a stronger community. I have to do what I think is right.”

Afterward, Tran and his wife ripped down hundreds of paper flags of the former South Vietnam that protesters had plastered over their front door. He then locked up his business and left in a white police van.

Tran has been promising to display the flag and photo at the Bolsa Avenue store, Hi Tek TV and VCR, since Feb. 10, when a judge reversed her Jan. 21 order that he remove them.

His vow incensed the community in Little Saigon, home to an estimated 200,000 Vietnamese Americans, most of them political refugees who fled communism.

Although Tran has been evicted by the owners of the shopping complex, he plans to fight the action.

Tran had given no warning that he would be returning Saturday morning to the store, but more than 200 protesters were outside when he arrived.

Protesters had hung a defaced effigy of Ho Chi Minh over Tran’s shop. Two replicas of coffins draped with the U.S. and South Vietnamese flags were laid in front of his store along with an altar for soldiers killed in the war.

The flag and poster were visible through the store window, but police kept the demonstrators at least 20 yards away.

“We are all sick in our heart,” cried Thuy Huynh, 49, as she pounded her fist to her heart.

A community leader took a microphone at a makeshift podium across from the video store, pleading for calm. “The rest of the world is looking on us right now,” said Luan Tran, attorney for the Vietnamese Community of Southern California.

By morning, about 150 officers from Westminster, Huntington Beach and Irvine, the Sheriff’s Department and the County Marshal had assembled.

“We’re committed to being here for the duration,” said Lewis. “We’re hopeful that once [the protesters] get used to the psychological aspect of it being up, we can negotiate a peaceful way to handle the protests.”

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Staff writers Phil Willon and Allison Cohen contributed to this report.