One Man’s Flag Sparks Protest of Thousands

* Re “Communist Flag Flies in the Face of Village Unity,” Feb. 28 Orange County Voices, by Jeffrey Brody:

I feel Brody has missed the point by oversimplifying this conflict between Truong Van Tran and the “community.” This conflict goes far beyond the values of “village” culture.

There are people out there protesting who have traveled from Europe to participate. It is fundamentally a political issue, not cultural.

These people who are protesting against Tran were either victims or the relatives and friends of victims of a brutal Communist regime.

Tran has taken the most irritating symbols of that oppressive political regime and displayed them in front of these people who came here to escape from being themselves the victims of that environment of oppression.

It is a protest not against the violation of “village and family values,” as Brody claims, but against the very roots of the philosophical and political system that Tran wants to extol.

Anyone who wishes to praise, honor or adore that system ought to go back to live in that system, if it is so wonderful. Why is he even living in the United States if the regime resulting from Ho Chi Minh and his flag is so great? Does he expect to win a whole bunch of converts to his cause?

Please don’t reduce this process to “culture.” It is something that would offend anyone who has been the victim of dislocation, disruption, suffering, pain and misery that results from any political system that deprives people of their human rights.

If there is any “community” that is offended, it is the community of all victims living today throughout the world whose misery can never be forgotten.

TED SPRIGGS JR.

Orange

* Jeffrey Brody’s article attempting to explain the demonstrations against shop owner Truong Van Tran’s hanging of a picture of Ho Chi Minh and a foreign flag, citing local Vietnamese intolerance of free speech (except, of course, their own), was both apologist and a non sequitur.

I am an American of Polish descent. My grandparents stole in the night from the Warsaw ghetto to this country in the hold of a freighter. They possessed the clothes on their backs and a few small coins in their socks.

They came, proud to become Americans and supremely grateful for the gifts of equality and other inalienable rights expressed in the Bill of Rights.

For 200 years, American men and women have given their aid and lives to protect those precious rights, both here and abroad.

More than 50,000 Americans alone died in the jungles, rice paddies and beaches of Vietnam, attempting in vain to protect the freedom of that small, distant country’s people.

After America’s defeat in that prolonged engagement, great numbers of Vietnamese fled the Communist takeover, many relocating in Orange County.

On a Friday night, I walked the streets of Little Saigon in Westminster watching thousands loudly protest the right of one man to hang a small picture and a foreign flag in his store. Hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and the safety of local police have been employed to protect and ensure those people’s right to protest.

Ironically, indeed hypocritically, that expensive expression of their inalienable 1st Amendment right was to demand the evisceration of that same right of free speech from one small shop owner.

Our new Americans in Westminster would do well to heed our Founding Fathers, at least out of respect for all those Americans who died on their home soil, to create and preserve the rights they so passionately enjoy demonstrating here.

JON M. ALEXANDER

Dana Point

* The businessman who had a right to go to his store was prevented by a mob, was grabbed by police and forced into custody.

And before he was grabbed, he was hit by an egg, spat upon and no officer was able to make an arrest or even disperse the crowd for being disorderly.

Is it cowardice, laziness or just a message from Orange County police that if you are Disneyland or “anti-communist,” you can get away with anything here?

Women, be aware that if it is allowed here, your health clinics are next and it won’t be just eggs. Police cannot subjectively decide whom they are going to protect.

If Westminster can’t or won’t protect the rights of its citizens, it is time to ask for assistance from the state or federal government. We don’t allow the Ku Klux Klan to violate individuals’ rights. Neither should we let any other mob do the same.

ROBERT UNETIC

Santa Ana

* Ho Chi Minh is responsible for the mass murder of millions of Vietnamese and the war that took the lives of more than 50,000 American men and women.

Currently his followers and their regime are causing great pain to the people of Vietnam and the families of American MIAs.

Does our 1st Amendment guarantee the right of any person who irresponsibly and provokingly displays the picture of mass murderer Charles Ng or Texas racist and convicted murderer John King in our neighborhood and in front of our children?

BAO THUAN

Garden Grove

* Truong Van Tran has legally used his free speech right to advocate a country that suppresses its people from exercising that very right. And we applauded him for his disturbing behavior.

Fifteen thousand Americans have legally practiced their free speech right to protest Tran’s action and to demand human rights in Vietnam. And we condemned the protesters for their good cause.

ANTHONY HUY

Santa Ana

* Before hanging the Communist flag and Ho Chi Minh’s picture, Truong Van Tran had faxed some of the Vietnamese community leaders and newspapers notifying them of his intentions, arrogantly telling them to “come and take them down.” Provoked by Tran, the political refugees had no choice but to come and protest.

This is not an issue of the 1st Amendment, nor the issue of a whole community protesting against one man. It is an issue of a manipulative man exploiting his freedom of speech to thrust symbols like daggers into the heart of a peaceful community whose many members have had their loved ones buried alive or savagely killed by Ho Chi Minh’s troops.

It is an issue of political victims fighting against a cold-blooded regime which has been cowardly pushing behind a foolish video store owner.

THANH MAI

Garden Grove