Flag of South Vietnam - Political Significance

Political Significance

The flag of the former South Vietnam (also used under Emperor Thành Thái) remains highly controversial, particularly in the case of Vietnamese Americans, Vietnamese Australians, and other Vietnamese around the world who fled Vietnam after the war, who call it the "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag."

In Vietnam at present, the flag is prohibited by law from public display.

In the United States, virtually no Vietnamese Americans use the current flag of Vietnam, which many of them consider offensive. Instead, they use the flag of South Vietnam as their symbol. The same is true for Vietnamese Canadians in Canada, Vietnamese Germans in western Germany, for Vietnamese in the Netherlands, France and Norway, and for Vietnamese Australians in Australia.

• When a Vietnamese American video tape store owner displayed the current flag of Vietnam and a photo of Ho Chi Minh in front of his store in Westminster, California, in 1999, a month-long protest against it climaxed when 15,000 people held a candlelight vigil one night, sparking the Hitek Incident (Hitek was the name of the store).
• A faux pas by the United States Postal Service in using the current Vietnamese flag in a brochure to represent the Vietnamese American community that it serves caused outrage among Vietnamese Americans and resulted in an apology.
• In 2004, many Vietnamese American students at the California State University, Fullerton threatened to walk out on their graduation ceremony when the university chose to use the current flag of Vietnam to represent its Vietnamese students. The Vietnamese American students demanded that the university use the former flag of South Vietnam instead. This resulted in the university scrapping all foreign flags for the ceremony.
• In 2006, Vietnamese-American students at the University of Texas at Arlington protested against the use of the Vietnamese flag in the Hall of Flags in Nedderman Hall and the exclusion of the South Vietnamese flag at a cultural diversity show during International Week. After weeks of protests, the university decided to scrap all flags from the display.
• During World Youth Day 2008, tensions flared between the 800 Vietnamese pilgrims who used the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the 2300 Vietnamese Australians pilgrims who used the Republic of Vietnam flag.
• In 2008, many protested against Nguoi Viet Daily News, a Vietnamese-language newspaper in Orange County, California, for publishing a photograph of an art installation depicting a foot spa bearing the colors of the flag.
• The lobbying efforts of Vietnamese Americans resulted in the state governments of Louisiana, California and Ohio to adopt it to symbolize Vietnamese Americans.