Westminster adopted a resolution last week opposing what Councilmember Amy Phan West called “VietRISE’s promotion of communist propaganda.” The move by the City Council has sparked a back-and-forth between the city’s Vietnamese community on free speech and how local governments voice their dissent.
VietRISE is a social justice group based in Orange County that supports the Vietnamese and immigrant communities. The area also is home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
“The seminar promoted a distorted historical narrative that glorified Hồ Chí Minh and the Communist Party, whitewashing decades of dictatorship, political oppression and human rights abuses,” West stated in the Sept. 3 staff report.
The motion is tied to an August event and Instagram post by VietRISE called "The August Revolution: Vietnam’s Fight for Freedom." One slide quoted Vietnamese revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, who was the founder and first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
“The August Revolution of 1945 marked the moment Vietnam finally broke free from nearly a century of colonial rule and won independence,” the group’s Instagram caption stated.
Why VietRISE is talking about revolution
Tracy La, director of VietRISE, said the post was part of a series born out of the realization that so many people don't know about Vietnam’s history beyond 1975.
“Every year for the last 50 years, the Vietnamese American community has commemorated the fall of Saigon and Black April, but in the last eight years that we've run VietRISE, we've realized that young Vietnamese people don't know anything that happened before then,” La said.
In addition to this year being the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, La said, the group learned that it was also the 80th anniversary of when Vietnam won independence from French and Japanese occupation.
“Different members of the community got really upset because we quoted Hồ Chí Minh, who literally gave the Declaration of Independence,” La said. “We would have quoted anyone that gave that formal declaration.”
How city officials are responding
Councilmember NamQuan Nguyen said VietRISE’s post is “unbalanced” and only reflects the experiences of North Vietnamese people, whom he called communists.
“A more balanced account should also address re-education camps and long-term imprisonment of formal officials, soldiers, journalists and clergy after the Vietnam War and during,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen urged VietRISE to take down the post from Instagram and all other social platforms and issue a public apology.
Councilmember Carlos Manzo, the only council member to abstain during the vote, said the staff report lacked information, pointing to how only Pages 1 and 6 of an eight-page post were included.
“It seems like they're trying to be disingenuous or trying to hide some information,” Manzo said. “I'm not going to condemn somebody when there's all this information missing.”
The irony of the item, Manzo said, is that suppressing freedom of speech is a tool of communism.
How is the freedom of speech involved?
The resolution is not an attack on free speech but an exercise of it, West told LAist in a statement.
“I stand by the First Amendment and my right to defend my community, especially Vietnamese refugees who fled communism,” West said. “VietRISE can share its views, but I will always speak out against misinformation and efforts to rewrite history.”
La disagrees and said the city’s resolution adds to the increasing censorship by the government at all levels.
“[West] has that right to say what she wants, but to take it to a government body, for us, what that signals is she wants to make us feel intimidated,” La said.
The government is free to express its own point of view, said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition.
“If they are condemning or criticizing what other people say, where it crosses the First Amendment line is if the government takes action … by threatening them or retaliating against them or threatening to retaliate,” Loy said.
It is best practice that public officials affirm freedom of speech, even when they disagree, to ensure that people are not intimidated, Loy added.
