Why protest the Viet Weekly? – a response to “Free-press backlash hurts Little Saigon stores” by Mike Anton, Los Angles Times, Sept. 2, 2007 and "Red Scare in Little Saigon" by Nick Schou, OC Weekly, August 6, 2007.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/orange/la-me-viet2sep02,1,2213448.story?coll=la-editions-orange

http://www.ocweekly.com/features/features/red-scare-in-little-saigon/27598/ 

by Jean Libby, editor  VietAm Review  

              The complaints of merchants in Garden Grove about the Vietnamese American community protests of Viet Weekly’s pro-communist publications remind me of the 1960s.  Not the antiwar movement sixties, but the civil rights movement sixties.  Martin Luther King, Jessie Jackson, leading marches and boycotts through the streets of Montgomery and Birmingham.  Walking instead of riding the buses.  Boycotting downtown business.  Those merchants didn’t like the protests either.  Papers were full of complaints about Dr. King’s freedom marches hurting business, he must be a Communist. And sure enough, there were plenty of feature stories interviewing one or two whites who would be extensively quoted as if they were experts on Constitutional law of free speech or free press from their rocking chairs on the creaking wood porches.  I can see the reporter dodging the tobacco juice now. 

I wondered then, as I wonder now, why someone’s erroneous opinion on what free speech and free assembly are would be printed.   In the old days it was because the reporter was more comfortable talking with whites on the periphery than African Americans on the front lines.  It was also because reporters didn’t understand the issues.  Could this describe Mike Anton, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times? 

            #1   Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are restrictions on the government, not of the people on each other.  Comparing the lawful, noisy protests of community opinion in Little Saigon with the tactics of the Communist government in suppressing the press in Vietnam by arrests and violence is not a valid equation.  Yet Mr. Katz’s views get more space than the organizer of the protests, Long Kim Pham.  Mr. Pham is very eloquent, and in English.  He gets one line.  That single statement is so well-articulated that I would like to quote it exactly:  “We came to this country with empty hands, and this country welcomed us with open arms.  We owe this country a big favor.  We feel that if we don’t speak up, we are not being responsible as a community.”

    #2  Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the Viet Weekly is written in Vietnamese for the Vietnamese-reading population, unless you are able to make that inference from the statement that local merchant Peter Katz can’t read or speak the language.   Nowhere is it mentioned that the Viet Weekly reprints articles directly from the Communist press releases, including a statement that Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, who represents much of Orange County, was “interfering with Vietnamese internal affairs” when she visited Hanoi with the Congressional delegation last April and was escorting invited Vietnamese citizens who were accosted by police outside the ambassador’s residence and prevented from entering.  Nowhere is it mentioned that the Viet Weekly editor Le Vu was a ticket-holder at the pricey private dinner for Vietnam President Triet at Dana Point in June.  

            As editor of VietAm Review, a Googled blog on the general topic of Vietnamese American Achievement, I have written primarily about Viet Weekly ‘s publication of falsehoods and audio manipulation of the statements of former Ambassador Michael Marine at a press statement in the Hilton Hanoi on April 6, 2007.  I have interviewed by Le Vu, editor of the Viet Weekly.  I am the journalist who first emailed the American Embassy in Hanoi in May 2007 asking for clarification of the statements of Ambassador Marine about Father Ly.  I looked for press conferences on the website and asked for a date in April that was noted but not published.  The response was that Ambassador Marine had made no statement about Father Ly at the conference, nor had any questions been asked about it.  The press conference of April 6 with the Congressional delegation is still not listed on the Embassy site as having occurred.  The written transcript--which finally came after repeated requests--is called a 'press roundtable.' 

        In an  article dated  August 16, 2007, Nick Schou of the Orange County Weekly has written an extensive feature entitled "Red Scare in Little Saigon" which is remarkably accurate on the history of the statements of Ambassador Marine which were masked by the American Embassy in Hanoi when I wrote to them in May.  It is accurate, that is, until  he emails the Embassy and receives a reply from Angela Aggelar, a press and cultural attaché with the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, who said her office was unaware of the controversy surrounding Viet Weekly’s coverage of Marine’s press conference. “I believe Ambassador Marine’s comments speak for themselves, and I have nothing to add to them,” she wrote to  the Orange County Weekly.

        My interchange of emails, the transcript of the April 6 event at the Hilton Hanoi that took two months to obtain and then only with a phone call to the press office of the U.S. State Dept. in Washington whose name of course cannot be mentioned, extensively involving both the Vietnamese staff and the American head of the Press office James Warren, was published in VietAm Review http://vietamreview.blogharbor.com/blog/HanoiPropagandainUSA/_archives/2007/7/12/3087860.html

      According to Schou, Le Vu denies everything: “I stand by the audiotape,” he says. “If it is fabricated, then I should be in jail by now, or the embassy would have contacted me. That’s the cornerstone of their charge against me. If they can prove that, what is the defense for me? How could I make up Michael Marine talking about religious freedom other than if I were trying to help the communist regime?” 

    This statement makes no sense whatever.  As I am the person who has made the charge of manipulation (not fabrication) of the audiotape, and not the Vietnamese American demonstrators, I challenge the reporters in Orange County to talk to me about it.  One, from the Orange Country Register, Deepa Bhorath, has done so.  I sent her a copy of the transcript that was furnished me by James Warren of the American Embassy in Hanoi.  The  result was a less flattering  opinion of  Viet Weekly  in the OC Register than in the L.A. Times or the OC Weekly. 

    My colleague Le Huu Phu, who was the first Boat Person political refugee from Vietnam to be admitted by asylum, with his wife, to the United States in 1976, is bilingual and has translated articles from Viet Weekly.  Our article detailing the misinformation and manipulation in Viet Weekly is the most-read article (full views) on my blog.  We are particularly concerned about the defamation of Nguyen Chi Thien, the internationally renowned dissident Vietnamese poet who was held for 27 years in Communist prisons in North Vietnam, by Viet Weekly.  They crudely satirize him and label him a Communist spy. 

Mr. Thien is now an American citizen with all rights and privileges and protection.  He is given the opportunity of interview, in English, by Nick Schou of the OC Weekly and quoted about the crimes of Ho Chi Minh. 

        Criticism of Viet Weekly by the Vietnamese community is not limited to demonstrations in Garden Grove.  The organizers hold public meetings to discuss the issues, which are reported in the major Vietnamese language newspaper in the country, Nguoi Viet Daily News.  The organizers write articles which are published in other Vietnamese language media.  My English-language publications about the Viet Weekly’s gross violation of the U.S. Ambassador were read and appreciated by California Assemblyman Van Tran (R – Garden Grove), who complimented them last week and encouraged me to continue writing about Viet Weekly.  The reason, he said, is that the younger generation of Vietnamese in America, such as Le Vu, are not appreciative of the sacrifices of the first generation who brought them here.  This generation—which is also his own—needs to know more of their own accurate history, which Viet Weekly is not publishing, according to the Assemblyman. 

Rather than creating an Internet Vietnamese University, as he set out to do in 2003,  Le Vu has set a trap for Vietnamese Americans who have suffered in Vietnam under the Communists since the August Revolution of 1945. 

#                            #                            #                               #

Jean Libby             editor@vietamreview.net