It was a passionate plea for a noble cause. And so the money--small change and large checks--flowed in.
Altogether, more than $250,000 poured into the paper-box coffers of the Committee for Just Cause for a Free Vietnam during anti-communist protests in Little Saigon earlier this year. Members of Orange County's Vietnamese emigre community, enraged by a shopkeeper's display of communist icons, gave freely.
The overwhelming response heralded what some believed would be a new unity for a long-fractured Vietnamese American community.
But instead, five months later, the money has become the focus of another controversy: The group's leader, Tuan Anh Ho, has been called upon to publicly account for the money's use.
Ho said the donations, which he says totaled $279,680, are safely held in a bank. But he has yet to open the books to the public.
His refusal to provide an accounting has stirred the ire of an already suspicious community. Some critics have questioned Ho's recent trips in the wake of the protests around the country and to Europe and Australia to promote the work of the group.
"He has refused to answer the public's questions. Now people are worried that he has hidden away the money," said Thang Ngoc Tran, president of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a nonprofit social service organization.
"It might be coincidence [about the trips and other expenditures], but people have a right to question what happened to their money."
Last month, several hundred people crowded into the Westminster civic center for a meeting called by the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, demanding answers from Ho and then slapping a vote of no-confidence on his leadership.
In the past, the Committee for Just Cause has served as the political arm for the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, which as a social service organization officially didn't participate in political activities.
The two groups had worked very closely together in the past on anti-communist demonstrations, with the Vietnamese Community picking up the expenses for Ho's group's work, said Tran. That included its work during the February and March protests that drew tens of thousands of people.
But that relationship has soured over the last several months since Ho registered his group March 10 with the California secretary of state's office as an independent nonprofit.
