2,500 Protest Vietnamese Concert at Anaheim Theater

Close to 2,500 angry demonstrators rallied outside a Vietnamese pop music concert at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim on Sunday. The concert and protest underscored a widening cultural divide between some older refugees and younger Vietnamese Americans.

In recent years, new Vietnamese music imports have begun to edge out more expensive and more traditional Little Saigon record productions, to the consternation of many South Vietnamese refugees.

Protest organizers and others said the musical event was no more than propaganda for Vietnam’s Communist government. Waving American and flags of the former South Vietnamese government, they heckled motorists entering the theater parking lot, and stamped on mannequins of Ho Chi Minh and other Communist leaders. Several wore their former military uniforms.

“This is not a cultural show. . . . Communists have no culture and no art,” said Ky Ngo of Garden Grove, a rally spokesman. “I think they brought them here to test the reaction of how we feel about Communists.”

But the show’s organizer, John To of San Diego, said the lineup included internationally acclaimed Vietnamese singers and musicians, and that love songs, not politics, were on the evening’s program.

The performers included Lam Truong, a 25-year-old singer who is studying at Berkley School of Music in Boston--among the “cream of the crop,” To said. Also appearing was singer Cam Van, a Vietnamese diva who was in Orange County visiting an uncle and her drummer husband, Khac Trieu, To said.

To, 38, who left Vietnam in 1975, expressed sympathy for the demonstrators, many of them older people who were forced to flee during or after the war.

“They have family who died in the war, and they have deep hatred for Communists,” To said. “I’m of a younger generation. I don’t want to look back, I want to move on and open up and show these people what freedom is all about.”

To said an estimated 600 to 700 people bought tickets to the concert. It was not clear if every one of those buyers attended.

The crowd outside was far larger.

By 5 p.m. police said an estimated 2,500 people were crowded onto sidewalks along Katella Avenue and Stadium Crossing. The rally remained peaceful as about 100 Anaheim police officers, including 40 wearing anti-riot gear, kept protesters and concertgoers apart.

But there were tense moments. After the concert, police escorted most of the audience out a back door to their cars.

One older woman and a girl who had parked in front of the theater were accosted by a mob of demonstrators shouting “Go home, Communists.”

“The Communists call this a cultural relations program,” said Hoa Pham, 50, of Torrance, who fought with the South Vietnamese special forces until April 1975. “It is propaganda. These kind of events trigger people’s memory bad.”

A similar demonstration was held in June 1999, with 250 people protesting outside the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana because of an exhibition of Vietnamese paintings.

Most of the demonstrators Sunday were from Orange and Los Angeles counties, where large numbers of Vietnamese refugees live.

Times staff writer Dave McKibben contributed to this report.