Crowd of 800 Assails Doctor’s Impending Trade Visit to Hanoi

WESTMINSTER — More than 800 people opposed to normalized relations with Vietnam gathered outside the offices of Dr. Co Pham on Saturday in the largest protest to date of the physician’s scheduled trade mission to Hanoi next week.

While Westminster Police Lt. Andrew Hall characterized Saturday’s demonstration, organized by the Committee for a Just Cause of Free Vietnam, “noisy but controlled,” an angry Pham said he planned to file harassment complaints Monday against the protesters who picketed his Bolsa Avenue medical offices.

“They have jeopardized my practice and the safety of my patients,” the physician said. “They were yelling at my patients and obstructing my business. I’m going to have to do something.”

The organization has staged demonstrations outside Pham’s office for the past several weeks, but Hall said Saturday’s crowd was the largest yet. Last week, the committee used community advertisements in an attempt to draw larger assemblies.

The committee wants Pham to step down as president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, a position Pham has used to advocate trade with Vietnam. The doctor said his position on trade is not an endorsement of the country’s communist regime.

“They say I am a communist. I am not a communist,” Pham said, adding that he will neither step down from his chamber position nor cancel his mission to Hanoi. “They are not going to change my plans.”

Pham will be traveling with a delegation of bankers, developers, academics, immigration lawyers and representatives of U.S. companies eager to open trade with Vietnam.

The pickets at Pham’s office began Aug. 22, just days after news leaked out that the Vietnamese chamber and the Asian Business League of California were to sponsor the trade mission.

The planned trip has rekindled debate within the Vietnamese American community about how to deal the Vietnamese government in the face of warming relations between Hanoi and Washington.

Pham declined to say exactly when he will be leaving for Hanoi.

Lt. Hall said police made no arrests, but the demonstration generated a number of telephone calls to police complaining of noise and clogged traffic along Bolsa Avenue.

Hall said the crowd began gathering around 9 a.m. and dispersed promptly at noon, as organizers had previously told police.

“In past weeks, they have had as few as 20 people show up,” Hall said. “But this time, they really turned out.”