USA: VIDEO STORE ORDERED TO REMOVE PORTRAIT OF HO CHI MINH

(22 Jan 1999) Eng/Viet/Nat

A judge has ordered the owner of a video store in Westminster, California's Little Saigon neighborhood to remove a wall-sized portrait of the late Vietnamese communist leader.
The courts are regarding it as a shrine to North Vietnam's Communist founder, Ho Chi Minh.

The picture of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag sparked a four-day protest in the de facto capitol of Vietnamese immigrants in America.

Protesters are outraged that a local video store owner would trivialise their suffering under the Communists by setting up a virtual shrine to the communist leader in his shop.

Anti-Communist chants that seemed to belong to another era rang out in the small Los Angeles neighborhood of Little Saigon Thursday afternoon.

Hundreds of outraged Vietnamese refugees are for the fourth straight day protested outside a neighbourhood video store.

The store's owner displayed a large portrait of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag on his wall and these people want them taken down.

The shop's owner has not been seen since Monday when he was beaten up by some of the protesters outside his store.

Many of these immigrants say they fled Communist Vietnam for the U-S after spending years in prison camps and having several family members killed by the Communists.

And that's why a virtual shrine to Ho Chi Minh has unleashed deep-seated sentiments from a war that ended more than twenty years ago.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Ho Chi Minh killed about two (m) million Vietnamese and Ho Chi Minh killed over fifty eight -- Americans so today we don't want a picture of Ho Chi Minh hanging here. We don't
want the Communist flag hanging here. We're looking for freedom we come here. We don't want Communist being here. Truong Tran, he (the store's owner) is Communist."
SUPER CAPTION: Cu Tran, Vietnamese Refugee

This veteran lost a leg fighting the Vietcong before seeking refuge in the United States.

He's offended by the Ho Chi Minh shrine.

SOUNDBITE: (Vietnamese)
"I was in the army and fought against the Vietcong. That's why I lost my leg and now I don't want to see any Communists over here."
SUPER CAPTION: Khon Nguyen, ARVN Veteran

The protesters are signing a petition they'll send to the U-S immigration service to have the store owner expelled from the country.

They believe his Communist sympathies should strip him of his status as a political refugee.

The landlord of the marketplace, meanwhile, has placed an eviction notice on the shop and is seeking a court order to enter the store and take down the Communist paraphernalia.

Until that happens, community leaders say the protest should continue.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"When the Communist took over South Vietnam, my relatives spent over ten or fifteen years in prison, that is the reason why you come here and you say look at those kinds of
pictures of the flag. It provokes our anger."
SUPER CAPTION: Thang Tran, President, Vietnamese Community of Southern California

SOUNDBITE: (Vietnamese)
"He and the Communist party ruled the Vietnamese people for fifty years and the only thing they brought to the Vietnamese people is poverty and torture so today we don't
want to see his picture and the Communist blood flag."
SUPER CAPTION: Cu Tran, Vietnamese Refugee

Civil rights activists say the shop's owner has every right under U-S law to have the photo and flag hung prominently in his shop.

But with emotions running this high, the standoff in Little Saigon will likely continue until these images from the war return to the past.

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