A Northern California city has become the first in the San Francisco Bay Area to ban the flag of the communist Socialist Republic of Vietnam, NBC News reported.
The San Jose City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to ban the flag — a yellow star on a red background — from being displayed on city flagpoles, following in the footsteps of the Southern California city of Westminster, which adopted a similar resolution to ban the flag in December last year.
San Jose City Councilman Tam Nguyen, who fled Vietnam when he was 19 and who had witnessed some of the horrors of the Vietnam War, said he introduced the resolution because he felt the city shouldn't spend money and resources to fly the flag. He called it a "symbol of tyranny, oppression, and dictatorship."
"The [Vietnamese] community in San Jose escaped that flag and we just want to live in peace without being reminded of the painful past," he told NBC News in an email.
