1 Man’s War on Vietnam

Few things define Southern California’s Vietnamese American community more than its passionate brand of anti-Communism, on display in heated discussions along the sidewalk cafes of Little Saigon and in frequent demonstrations.

That’s what makes the case of Van Duc Vo different. His activism went beyond words to action, making him a folk hero to many in Little Saigon and a wanted terrorist in Vietnam.

Vo, 42, of Baldwin Park, is being held in a Los Angeles jail, accused by the U.S. attorney’s office of trying to blow up the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok. His brother, 49-year-old Vinh Tan Nguyen, sits in a Manila jail, accused of a similar bombing plot against the Vietnamese Embassy in the Philippines.

Authorities call the brothers terrorists. But to California’s Vietnamese American community, they’ve emerged as heroes. Last month, the brothers’ detainment was the subject of a two-day protest and hunger strike in Santa Ana that drew hundreds of protesters who hailed them for trying to “liberate” Vietnam. Van Vo has received the most attention because of his years of activism in the community.

“He has done something we can’t do,” said protester Thanh Le, 66, of Costa Mesa.

Anti-Communist activist Chanh Huu Nguyen added: “We want to stand behind him. He’s a freedom fighter.”

Both brothers were members of a Little Saigon-based group that bills itself as the exiled “Free Government of Vietnam.” From its offices in Garden Grove, the group’s leaders try to foment opposition to the Vietnamese government.

Van Vo faces possible extradition to Thailand, but the Vietnamese government also wants him to face charges in Hanoi. The Vietnamese have cited the U.S. government’s war on terrorism in urging American authorities to turn him over.

Vo denies he is a terrorist. In an interview, he said he planned a bomb attack in the embassy but decided at the last minute not to go through with it.

Vo’s story is at once familiar and different from that of many Vietnamese emigres. He escaped the oppression of the Communist government of his homeland on an overcrowded boat and established a successful life in Southern California. But he also turned his back on this success to dedicate his life to the overthrow of the Communists.

His mother, Tim Nguyen of Baldwin Park, said of her sons: “I think back on what happened to our family [in Vietnam], and I cannot blame them. I do not want or need anything in my life. I just want my sons back.”

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Even at the height of the Vietnam War, the family felt like they had it good.

Tim Nguyen sold duck eggs in Saigon, and her husband was a decorated police officer. Their six children--five sons and a daughter--were good students and most attended universities.

It all changed with the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Government officials barged into their home and arrested Vo’s father. Nguyen said she couldn’t afford to feed her children, so she dispersed them to relatives in various regions of Vietnam.

“My mom cried day and night,” Vo recalled in a jailhouse interview at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

Vo said he spent the next few years in jail or begged on the streets of Saigon for food. He and a dozen friends eventually organized an escape. In 1978, they squeezed onto a 6-foot boat in the middle of the night and pushed out to sea.

Vo arrived a week later at a refugee camp in the Philippines. After a year at the camp, he moved to Indiana to live with a sponsoring family and studied English. He eventually moved to El Monte, which had a growing Vietnamese immigrant community. He went to school at Rio Hondo College, studying architecture. He was voted president of Rio Hondo’s Vietnamese Student Assn. and helped form a regional Vietnamese American student group.

By the early 1980s, he felt his life was falling into place. He married and had four children. He opened his own construction business, hiring his older brother, Vinh, to work with him. He also taught Vietnamese to elementary school students on weekends. He slowly brought his siblings over from Vietnam along with his mother and father, who had finally been released from jail.

But after work, his obsession with Vietnam grew. He began organizing protests each April 30, the anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and organizing petition drives and cultural events such as the Tet Festival. He frequently spoke out on late-night Vietnamese-language radio shows, criticizing the Communist government and urging expatriates in Southern California to organize.

“I kept thinking about my own escape and my family’s pain,” Vo said. “How could the regime do this to every family, not just mine, and get away with it?”

The activism was taking a toll on his work and marriage. In 1991, his wife filed for divorce, saying he was seldom home. Vo barely showed up at his company, too, and decided to shut it down.

In 1993, when Vietnam eased immigration restrictions, Vo visited his homeland.

Spending three years in the country, he took notes as he traveled from north to south. He described the effort as part fact-finding, part missionary work. When he could, he told villagers he met along the way about the United States and the benefits of opening markets.

“My work was the hardest during these years,” Vo said. “I had to explain to them that Americans were not evil. I wanted to make a subtle influence,” Vo said.

Vo was held for six months after he wrote articles for Vietnamese newspapers, which were restricted to homeland writers. He was deported in 1996 and returned to his parent’s home in Baldwin Park.

He heard about the anti-Communist group Government of Free Vietnam, an organization that seeks to overthrow the Hanoi regime. Along with his brother Vinh, he met with the group’s leader, Chanh Huu Nguyen.

The brothers quickly became involved in the group and within a year, Vo returned to countries along the Vietnam border in search of villagers whose homes were taken by the Communist government. He recruited them for the Government of Free Vietnam.

“I wanted to give them hope that they can do something about the situation,” Vo said.

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In June 2001, Vo was in Thailand with another member of the organization, Pan Vian Pun Tian See, a Vietnamese national living in Thailand. Authorities there allege that the two men packed explosives into a pair of cellular phones that See planted outside the Vietnamese Embassy. But the explosives did not detonate as planned when the men allegedly dialed the phones.

Authorities said the bomb malfunctioned. Vo, however, says he aborted the plan once he realized the U.S. Embassy was nearby. “We want revenge but we didn’t want to kill innocent Americans,” he said. “We were upset and we wanted to start something in Thailand to send a message to the Vietnam government and ring a bell as an international warning.... To call me a terrorist is an exaggeration.”

Authorities immediately began to look at anti-Vietnam activists as suspects in the bombing attempt. They eventually linked See and later Vo to the incident.

Vo fled Thailand, going to Seattle to visit his younger brother. Orange County sheriff’s deputies, alerted by Thai authorities, arrested him in October when he returned to John Wayne Airport. Vo was charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction by a U.S. citizen in a foreign country and is awaiting word on extradition to Thailand.

His brother, Vinh, faces similar charges in Manila. A few months after the alleged Thailand incident, he was arrested in another alleged bombing attempt using cell phones at the Vietnamese embassy there. In this case, too, a bomb never exploded.

Law enforcement officials in Manila have released few details about the case. But according to Filipino press reports, police arrested Vinh and three alleged conspirators at a townhouse where officials allegedly found bomb-making materials.

Authorities charged that Vinh and the men tried to set up the bombs to explode Sept. 2, the national day of the Republic of Vietnam.

Vo said he has no regrets about his activism--even the time behind bars. He is willing to face trial in Thailand but worries that government officials there would then extradite him to Vietnam. Officials in Bangkok law enforcement could not be reached for comment.

He said he was saddened to leave behind his family, but “they’re grown and taken care of, so I can try to accomplish my goals now and do what makes me happy.”

As he sat in a Los Angeles jail, his future uncertain, Vo said he’s realized one thing: “I know I can’t change the country by myself.”