Official Funeral for Publisher Canceled : Fearful Vietnamese Plan a Quiet Goodby to Pham

The funeral was supposed to be Little Saigon’s way of paying its last respects to Tap Van Pham, the editor and publisher who was killed in a Garden Grove arson last weekend.

But on Thursday, a day after several editors for Vietnamese-language publications in Orange County received a letter from an anti-communist group claiming responsibility for burning Pham’s office, those plans were canceled.

“All of us editors in the Vietnamese community were going to have big news stories about him, and we wanted to express our sorrow by having an official ceremony,” said Do Ngoc Yen, editor of Nguoi Viet, one of the larger newspapers in Orange County’s Little Saigon. “But now that the letter has been received, our plans have changed. We’re going to wait a while.”

Friends have decided to hold a quieter funeral at 11 a.m. Sunday at Peek Family Colonial Funeral Home in Westminster.

Throughout Little Saigon’s usually busy commercial zone Thursday, the atmosphere was subdued. Restaurants that usually bustle were relatively quiet. People sat in small groups in cafes and spoke softly to one another over herbal teas.

The Pho Bolsa is “a restaurant where you can usually find (former Vietnamese) Premier (Nguyen Cao) Ky, the writer, the singer, the political leader,” said Thien Cao, a civilian translator for Garden Grove police. “They talk and discuss things. Now there is no one.”

The reason, he said, is Pham’s death.

“Right now they are still in shock, and so they don’t want to talk about the subject at all.”

Pham, 45, died in a 2 a.m. fire that swept through his small, one-story Vietnamese-language publishing office Sunday in Garden Grove.

In a letter dated Aug. 9 and postmarked in San Jose, a group calling itself the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation claimed responsibility for the fire. The letter strongly criticized the publication of three ads in Mai for companies that the group has alleged are linked with the Communist government in Hanoi.

In their ads, those companies offer to ship packages of goods to Vietnam in return for U.S. dollars. Some Vietnamese immigrants here believe the arrangement is a scheme to funnel U.S. currency into Hanoi.

Will Halt Similar Ads

Editors at several Vietnamese-language publications in Orange County said Thursday that they will stop running similar ads. All spoke on condition of anonymity.

Do Ngoc Yen said he did publish ads for the three Canadian companies because he knew “they were suspicious.”

In San Jose, Nguyen Xuan Phac, who publishes the Vietnamese-language Dan Viet newspaper, said Thursday that he had heard of the group that claimed responsibility for Sunday’s firebombing.

Last year, he said, he received a letter in which the same group claimed responsibility for the shooting in Westminster of Tran Khanh Van of Santa Ana. Khanh Van, a former housing official with the South Vietnamese government, had been targeted after he suggested that the United States normalize relations with Hanoi.

“We don’t receive any letters of that sort anymore,” Nguyen said. “We condemn the people behind the scheme. We are against any scheme aiming at transfer of currency to the Communist regime. The more we do so, the more we add to the suffering of the people under the Communist regime.

“There are two things we stay away from: carrying advertisements on traveling to Vietnam and on sending money to Vietnam.”

Violence Assailed

He said he, too, opposes currency transfers to Vietnam but does not agree with expressing that opinion through violence.

“The goal is the same, but the methods of achieving the goal are entirely different. We warn people against cooperating with the Communists by sending money home.”

Whispers of concern and fear were widespread in Little Saigon. But many shopkeepers said they did not believe the claims of the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate Communists and Restore the Nation.

“I don’t believe the party that sent the letter is responsible because if they did do it, why would they make a claim to it?” a clerk in a videotape store said. “It just spread fear in the community, the same fear that the Communists were so good at spreading.”

The clerk said she had faith in two justice systems: “the authorities’ and Pham’s spirit.”

“In my Oriental way of thinking, I believe that Mr. Pham’s spirit will guide someone close to him to find out who killed him.

“After that, it’s a matter of time.”

Letter Circulating

The letter claiming responsibility for the firebombing was sent to many business people, according to editors of two Vietnamese-language newspapers, and it was gaining wider circulation Thursday.

One clerk at a bookstore who had received a copy of the letter said that such fear tactics were reminiscent of the Viet Cong.

“I think it’s the Viet Cong because violence like this makes the whole Vietnamese community look bad,” the clerk said, “like we are at war with one another, when it’s not true.”

‘Law-Abiding Residents’

A businessman in a cafe said: “We are law-abiding residents here in this country. We don’t want violence any more than anyone else.

“You have to look at the victim in this arson. Can the anti-Communists say without a doubt that he was pro-Communist? It is unfortunate because he may not have been.

“To die because he advertised for three companies is not right. It’s a shame. There should be better alternatives to this type of violence.”