Hundreds of Vietnamese Americans demonstrated Saturday outside a provocative art exhibit in Santa Ana that had featured Communist symbols that protesters claimed mocked their painful experiences as political refugees.
The protest -- joined by people bused in from as far away as San Jose -- came the day after one of the works was defaced with red paint and the owners of the building ordered the exhibit closed, saying the organizers lacked the proper business license.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 51 words Type of Material: Correction
Arts protest: An article in Sunday's California section about Vietnamese Americans protesting an art exhibit said that a man was surrounded by demonstrators after he waved a flag of Communist Vietnam. The man was waving a piece of art that featured the flag of Vietnam and the flag of South Vietnam.
Curators of the exhibit, which was commissioned by the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Assn., said they wanted to launch a discussion about freedom of expression in the Vietnamese community, where talk of communism is a taboo.
A week into the exhibit's run, Jim Nichols, a co-owner of the building at 1600 N. Broadway, acknowledged that he had been pressured by Vietnamese community members.
"We support the arts," Nichols said. "But my gosh. Create a firestorm? That's not a good atmosphere for a corporate building."
"We have a huge investment in this building and a serious vacancy factor," he said of the decision to order the exhibit closed. "They have factions in their community that go after anyone who in any way seems to put a positive light on communism."
In the crowd Saturday, a man who unfurled and waved a large flag of Communist Vietnam was immediately surrounded by demonstrators shouting, "Communist!" and, "Go back to Vietnam!"
Yelling, "I have rights. I have rights," the man was arrested by Santa Ana Police Department officers on suspicion of fighting in public.
Authorities had already blocked traffic on Broadway, a main downtown artery, between 15th and 17th streets, where demonstrators waved the yellow-and-red flag of South Vietnam and held up signs that said, "VAALA stabs the Vietnamese in the back."
Some of the demonstrators were clad in military fatigues. One man spread a Communist flag on the street and then encouraged a young boy to stomp on it.
Kathy Phuc Nguyen, a demonstration organizer and spokeswoman for the human rights group Thanh Nien Co Vang, drew cheers when, speaking through a bullhorn, she said, "Surely, one would not display a photograph of a young Jewish person wearing a Nazi symbol and standing next to a bust of Hitler in a heavily populated community of Holocaust survivors."
