Attack on Editor of Vietnamese Newspaper Is an Attack on Free Speech

A recent Los Angeles Times poll found that more than half the Vietnamese living in Southern California favor normalizing relations with Vietnam.

In the past few years, thousands of Vietnamese Americans have returned to their homeland to visit relatives, especially during Tet, the lunar new year. When they go back, they visit socialist Vietnam, one of the poorest countries in the world, as ambassadors of the free enterprise system and representatives of the American way of life. The disparity between the Vietnamese and their refugee brethren is startling: The per-capita income in Vietnam is about $300 per year.

After President Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo, many Vietnamese Americans journeyed to north Vietnam and south Vietnam seeking business opportunities. The first United States-Vietnam trade show, exhibiting scores of American goods, was organized in Hanoi last April by Vietnam Investment Information & Consulting, a San Diego-based, refugee-owned firm.

Judging from the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, this type of commerce may do more to undermine the Communist regime in Vietnam than the rhetoric of “retaking the homeland” that the right-wingers espouse.

It is against this backdrop that the attack against Yen Do, the erudite editor of the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the United States, appears to be an act of desperation. Do recently stepped down after 300 right-wing immigrants marched in front of his Orange County office, threatening a boycott of the Nguoi Viet Daily News if he did not resign.

Do, a moderate voice in the refugee community, was being punished for exercising free speech; his offense in the eyes of hard-line, anti-Communist refugees was defending a physician who supports trade with Vietnam.

The 53-year-old editor rankled right-wing hard-liners by suggesting that recent criticism of Dr. Co Pham, president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, had more to do with business than politics.

Do broke the code of silence in Little Saigon by telling a New York Times reporter that protests against Pham were motivated by competing physicians who wanted to discredit the doctor and steal his patients. Do played down the influence of the anti-Communists in Little Saigon--suggesting, as an influential poll has shown, that Orange County’s Vietnamese community, the largest in the world outside Vietnam, is becoming more open toward relations with Vietnam.

After the Times published Do’s remarks last month, he came under attack. Do refused to apologize but resigned to protect the 12,000-circulation newspaper that he started 16 years ago in his garage.

The editor has good reason to fear for his life. A few years ago, extremists firebombed one of his delivery trucks because a television station affiliated with the Nguoi Viet newspaper inadvertently broadcast a picture of Vietnam’s Communist flag.

Do joins a number of Vietnamese journalists who have been attacked in McCarthy-like fashion and redbaited by right-wing extremists. Some refugees have paid for their First Amendment rights with their lives. Five Vietnamese journalists have been slain by purported death squads in the United States since 1981. None of the murders have been solved.

The latest attack against Do occurs at a time when relations between Hanoi and Washington are thawing. Clinton lifted the embargo against Vietnam in February, and talks are underway to restore diplomatic relations. Refugee hard-liners, who oppose renewed relations with Hanoi, have been as unsuccessful in persuading Washington to reignite the Vietnam War as they have been with their own people.

The extremists know that support for their cause is waning. The days of 10,000 people storming a convention center and rallying behind resistance fighters in Little Saigon are over. Even Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant former South Vietnamese premier, supports peaceful relations with Hanoi.

By resorting to mob rule, threats and intimidation, the extremists undermine their cause. The right-wing anti-Communists in the Vietnamese community show that they have as much contempt for freedom of speech as do Communists in Vietnam. They expose themselves and show that while they oppose one form of dictatorship, they are far from being democratic themselves.

Mob rule has triumphed over freedom of the press in Little Saigon.