CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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-2— November 18, 2012 recognition, or dangerous clandestine escapes by boat or through land. It's because of these existing policies that continue to drive the Vietnamese people against their own government and millions of Vietnamese people to escape their homeland. The Vietnamese government must stop these policies to bring about peace, reconciliation and good will to rebuild the country from the Vietnamese people, both inside Vietnam and abroad. Your presumption that the proposed ordinance is wrong and contradictory with the current U.S. - Vietnam relation is entirely misplaced. It's precisely because the constructive engagement approach in the U.S. policy toward Vietnam has not brought about any substantive benefit to basic rights of the Vietnamese people that the residents in the City of Santa Ana want to take up this proposed ordinance to the bring attention to the U.S. Government that they want the U.S. Government to take more concrete and effective actions to benefit the Vietnamese people. The proposed ordinance may serve its purpose of reminding the U.S. Government that it should stand with the Vietnamese people, not with the tyrants. Your representation that the exchange of delegations between the two governments would bring about benefits to both peoples is only half correct. As evidenced by official visits by Vietnamese government delegations to various cities in the U.S. over the years, such visits would only bring out the most ferocious protests from the people or communities they go through and providing safety protection for everyone involved has cost local governments throughout the U.S. untold amount of taxpayer money. As seen in Orange County, just a simple display of Vietnamese communist images alone would bring out the worst of traumatizing and haunting experiences from the residents in the area. These experiences are not imaginary; they're the direct result of the Vietnamese government's continuing violation of human rights against their own people in Vietnam. Your conclusion that the proposed ordinance would obstruct cooperation between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments is without any basis. The proposed ordinance only reminds the U.S. and Vietnamese governments of the realities that an official visit by a Vietnamese government delegation would create in a local community such as that in the City of Santa Ana. Both governments must assess those consequences and address those issues before they impose such an undue burden on the local governments. The proposed ordinance does not in any way affect the way both the U.S. or Vietnamese governments conduct their diplomatic missions as evidenced by the fact that such measures have been adopted in the neighboring cities of Westminster and Garden Grove for almost ten years. Your assessment that the proposed ordinance does not reflect the will of the majority of the Vietnamese American people can't be further from the truth. Just comparing the act of one person in displaying an image of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese communist flag and the number of people who appeared in anger to protest such display, you may see where the dividing line should stand. This disparity is repeated almost every time when a Vietnamese government delegation appears in public in the U.S., be it in Washington, D.C., in front of the White House, in front of the City Hall in San Francisco, Houston, or a few years ago in Dana Point, Orange County, where Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet was visiting. You expressed your concern on behalf of a number of your Vietnamese American supporters over the proposed ordinance. We may know the number and the identities of those people, but they can freely continue to express their views