Vietnamese American community groups from Little Saigon plan to protest outside the Vietnam-U.S. Innovation and Investment Forum at the Anaheim Convention Center on Tuesday, March 17, starting at 1:30 p.m.

The demonstration is not simply about the forum itself. Organizers say the event gives a platform to a government that has been issuing criminal warrants against Vietnamese journalists and activists living legally in the United States and Europe, and using overseas networks to intimidate the diaspora into silence.

Assemblyman Tri Ta, whose 70th Assembly District covers Westminster, Garden Grove, and the heart of Little Saigon, has already weighed in formally. Before the forum opens, Ta sent a letter to Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken calling on the city to cancel the event. North OC Pulse reported on that letter last week.

The concerns driving the protest are concrete. In December 2025, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security issued arrest warrants for two journalists living legally in Germany — Le Trung Khoa in Berlin and Nguyen Van Dai in Hesse — for writing critically about the Vietnamese government. The warrants directed anyone to “immediately arrest them and bring them to the nearest police station,” a directive German authorities described as incitement to kidnapping on foreign soil.

That case follows a precedent that shook the diaspora. In 2017, Vietnamese security agents kidnapped Trinh Xuan Thanh off a Berlin street and returned him to Vietnam for trial and a life sentence. More recently, activist Hue Nhu was abducted twice while seeking asylum in Thailand — the second attempt in June 2025 — before Germany accepted her on humanitarian grounds. Vietnam then issued arrest and Interpol warrants against her anyway.

For Vietnamese Americans in Orange County, those cases are not distant news. Many residents fled the communist government after 1975. Their children and grandchildren have watched Hanoi pursue the same tactics against a new generation of critics — now aimed at people living in Germany and, increasingly, the United States.

Organizers put it plainly: no investment in Vietnam is safe while the government holds over 160 political prisoners, prohibits a free press, bans free elections, and reaches into free countries to silence its critics. “No foreign investment can be safe in Vietnam until the Vietnamese government allows free press, free speech, free election or religious freedom,” their statement reads.

The Anaheim forum is organized by Vietnam’s National Innovation Center and the Embassy of Vietnam, with backing from Vietnamese government agencies. It is being marketed as a venue for connecting American companies and investors with Vietnamese business opportunities.

Anaheim has not publicly responded to Ta’s letter. As of Monday, the event remains on schedule.

The protest gathers at the Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W. Katella Ave., at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.