Politics, Extortion May Be Behind Viet Journalist’s Death

A month before an arsonist killed him Sunday in his Little Saigon office in Garden Grove, journalist Tap Van Pham complained bitterly to his friends about Vietnamese extortionists.

He said they had stolen $360 from his mailbox and then demanded $60 to return the money, said Pham’s longtime friend and fellow journalist, Kieu Loan Nguyen.

She said that Pham agreed, then installed a mail slot in his office door and put up a note telling postal carriers to use the slot.

Pham had even confronted some gang members in the nearby Thanh Hai restaurant, saying, “ ‘Leave us (journalists) alone. We are just doing this for fun. Go somewhere else--they have more money,’ ” she said. “They said, ‘No, no, we don’t touch you guys.’ ”

Monday, acrid soot covered Pham’s former home and office at 10708 Westminster Ave., where he had lived and published Mai magazine, one of the most successful of a dozen Vietnamese publications in Orange County. Police said flammable liquid was poured into the front of the building, either through the new mail slot or through a broken window, and ignited about 2 a.m. Sunday.

Garden Grove police said Monday that they were uncertain about the motivation for the crime and are considering possibilities ranging from extortion to politically motivated retaliation for a controversial ad in Pham’s magazine. They had no suspects and no leads.

Strong anti-Communist feelings have been blamed for past violence among Vietnamese immigrants in Little Saigon. But that explanation seems unlikely in this case, because Pham had kept a low political profile, said Vietnamese friends and community leaders.

Luu Tran Kiem, president of the Orange County Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, said: “His magazine featured only entertainment in a very, very special way. I don’t understand why his magazine would be considered a target.”

Pham--who wrote the novel “Tren Dau Song,” based on his escape from Vietnam--was “absolutely not Communist,” said Nguyen, his journalist friend. She said that in Vietnam, Pham had been a staff writer for the South Vietnamese army newspaper, Tien Tuyen.

In fact, Pham, 45, often warned other journalists about becoming politically controversial, said Nguyen, who with her husband publishes Viet Press, a more politically oriented weekly Vietnamese newspaper based in Westminster.

Pham ran a one-man operation, working 14-16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, friends and neighbors said. Friends said he hoped to send for his wife and three children, whom he had left behind in Saigon when he fled on a boat in 1981.

Sunday, friends of Pham had speculated that the killing was politically motivated and was linked with an ad for a company that is unpopular with anti-Communist Vietnamese immigrants in this country.

But Nguyen said Monday that other Vietnamese publications, including her own, had carried the ad without incident.

“The feeling of the community is that because of Pham’s death this has become a really sensitive issue,” said a community leader who asked not to be identified.

The company behind the ad, Vinamedic Inc., a currency exchange concern with an address in Montreal, could not be reached for comment Monday.

In the ad, the company offers an exchange rate of 500 Vietnamese dollars for each U.S. dollar. The official exchange rate in Vietnam is about 80 Vietnamese dollars to the U.S. dollar, but black market fluctuations often push the actual rate to more than 700 to the dollar.

Nguyen said Pham had consulted with her and her husband before deciding to run the ad. They advised Pham to trust “your own judgment.”

He started to run the ad two or three months ago and ran similar ads for two Canadian companies, she said. Pham reportedly received an anonymous letter warning him not to continue publishing the ads.

The political atmosphere in Vietnamese refugee communities has been blamed for several recent attacks in Southern California and elsewhere.

In 1986, Tran Khanh Van of Santa Ana, a former top housing official of the South Vietnamese government, was shot after refusing to contribute to anti-Communist fund raising. Khanh Van, who survived the assassination attempt, believed he was targeted because he had been portrayed as favoring normalization of relations with Vietnam.

Nguyen Dam Thong, 48, editor of a Houston newspaper, was shot to death outside his home Aug. 24, 1982, after receiving numerous threats about articles in his paper.

Thirteen months before Thong’s death, Lam Trong Duong, editor of a community newsletter in San Francisco, was shot to death on a busy street. Cao The Dung, a political writer based in Washington, was also shot within the past two weeks, said Nguyen, who noted that he had belonged to an anti-Communist group.

In Los Angeles in 1981, Bong Huu Bach, the publisher of a small newspaper, was shot at but not hit as he left a restaurant.

“If you want somebody gunned down, say that guy is pro-Communist,” Nguyen said.

Police said the other possible motivation under consideration by investigators is extortion.

“From the standpoint of the Vietnamese business people, those that are willing to talk to us behind closed doors, it is a serious problem,” Garden Grove Police Sgt. Phil Mason said.

Nearly every business in the faded, L-shaped mini-mall where Pham’s office was located has been threatened with violence if owners fail to pay protection money, said Bill Hilburn, owner of the Book-Bin, a used bookstore next to Mai Magazine.

Two and a half years ago, extortionists threatened to bomb a restaurant if its owners did not pay $5,000, he said. About the same time, the windows of a furniture store were broken, he said. Its front window was shattered by a gunshot last month, manager Long Phan said.

In neighboring Westminster, Hilburn’s sister received phone threats from men who threatened to burn her nail salon if she did not pay $2,500. He said she moved her business.

Nguyen and other journalists worry about the threat of renewed violence in the community. She is angry that Pham had to die. But she does not know whom to blame.

“The community loves him,” she said. “There was no reason for him to die.”