IRVINE – In the wake of the city’s intense debate over a proposal to add three friendship cities in Vietnam, Pakistan and China, a group calling itself the Intercultural Alliance of Irvine has demanded an apology in a strongly worded letter of protest sent to Mayor Steven Choi.
The City Council voted 3-2 on April 8 against adding any of the cities and asked staff to add language to its policy requiring any future cities to be from countries free of human rights violations. Councilman Larry Agran, who proposed adding the three cities, and Councilwoman Beth Krom dissented.
The alliance wants Baoji, China, and Karachi, Pakistan, to be reconsidered for friendship city status.
The letter says the alliance represents some 30,000 Chinese residents and concerned members of the city and accuses Choi and council members Jeff Lalloway and Christina Shea of exploiting the friendship city proposal for their own political agenda. Irvine has 27,362 Chinese residents, according to 2010 Census Bureau data.
Organizer Wenshan Jia said the group has collected 500 signatures for the petition seeking an apology from the Council and Baoji’s inclusion as a friendship city. Jia said he plans to submit the signatures to the council at its meeting Tuesday, which starts at 4 p.m.
“As a result of the achievement of your narrow and outdated political agenda and petty politics, voting against all the cities proposed as friendship cities for Irvine, you have not only severely insulted the rights, dignity and pride of these important cultural constituencies of Irvine, you three have also blatantly discriminated against our cultural/ethnic heritages by equating our ethnic/cultural heritages with Communism,” it reads.
It criticizes the council for allowing one group of ethnic Asians – Vietnamese – to dominate the debate and, in some cases, threaten speakers who supported a Chinese friendship city. The letter goes on to claim that most of the Vietnamese protesters in the crowd weren’t Irvine residents.
“As public officials, to play such ethnic groups against each other to win political battles is not only a sign of recklessness and naked dirty politics, but also is doing the public and the civil society a grave disservice given the fact that public officials are expected to mediate and resolve inter-ethnic conflicts,” the letter said.
Councilwoman Shea called the petition another political ploy.
“I’m not going to offer any sort of apology,” she said Monday, adding that the Vietnamese protestors who crowded the Council chambers had every right to be there to protest Councilman Agran’s proposal.
She suggested that Agran should be the one to apologize for creating unrest in the city. “I will never apologize for anything I haven’t done,” she said.
The city has had international incidents on its hands before. Several years ago, the city angered Taiwanese residents when an overture to China was mishandled by a city staffer. The Chinese city had agreed to “befriend” Irvine only if it ended its longtime relationship with the Taiwanese city.
