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Resist the persecution of Comrade Jose Ma. Sison!
Executive Committee
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
October 02, 2007
The US, Dutch and Philippine governments are reactionary monsters
ganging up on Comrade Jose Ma. Sison, founding chairman of the Communist
Party of the Philippines. They are vicious and adamant in their efforts
to destroy a revolutionary icon who continue to serve as a teacher and
beacon for fellow revolutionaries, patriots, democrats and anti-imperialist
fighters in the Philippines and around the world.
Since the US government’s inclusion of Comrade Sison in its list of
so-called “foreign terrorists” in 2001, the US and Dutch imperialists
and the local puppet regime have intensified their efforts to persecute
and eliminate him. They have come up with one plot after another to
have him incarcerated, subjected to rendition and surrendered to US
authority, or assassinated.
These fiendish monsters have long wanted to devour Comrade Sison.
They are furious over his leading role as a proletarian revolutionary
and teacher. They are enraged by his guiding role in the international
solidarity work of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines
(NDFP) and the International League of People’s Struggles and in the
reinvigoration of the international communist and anti-imperialist
movement.
Comrade Sison has long earned the ire of the imperialists and
reactionaries because of his authorship of key definitive articles
and speeches that expose the rottenness of US imperialism and its
puppet client-state in the Philippines, uphold the correctness of
the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology and exhort the people to rise
up in resistance.
They are terrified of Comrade Sison and are working on ways to do
him away. They have gone to the extent of outrightly violating his
rights in the mistaken hope that this would derail the forward push
of the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggle for national and
social liberation.
On the basis of completely false charges, Comrade Sison was
arrested and held in solitary confinement by the Dutch police
for 17 days. The legal offensive against him was among more than
a thousand concocted by Malacañang’s Inter-agency Legal Action
Group (IALAG) chaired by National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales.
IALAG worked under the auspices of the US government and coordinated
with the Dutch police to trump up charges of “inciting to murder”
over the deaths of the puppet state’s two key counterrevolutionary
assets—Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara. Pieces of purported
evidence were manufactured at the premises of the Dutch embassy,
US embassy and the former US Clark Air Base.
We state for a fact that the charges against Comrade Sison are
patently false. The arrest operations that resulted in the deaths
of Kintanar and Tabara were carried out by teams of the New People’s
Army (NPA) assigned by duly constituted people’s courts based in
the Philippines. The operations to arrest the two traitors and
criminals were legitimate revolutionary acts and necessary
assertions of revolutionary justice in the face of charges
against them for grave capital counterrevolutionary and criminal
offenses. The Filipino people, their victims and the revolutionary
movement had been demanding justice for those crimes.
The charges against Kintanar and Tabara were prepared and
thoroughly discussed by the collective leadership of the CPP
and the NPA at a meeting in a guerrilla base in 1992 and formally
filed the following year before the people’s court. These charges
were supported by numerous incontrovertible evidence.
While the two traitors and criminals and their followers were
still pretending to be revolutionaries, they were already
observed to be usurping authority, employing funds, facilities
and forces of the revolutionary movement to engage in criminal
activities and living luxurious and profligate lifestyles, all
of which they tried to hide from the leadership and other
comrades in the CPP and NPA.
After being expelled fron the CPP and NPA, Kintanar officially
became a key intelligence asset of the Armed Forces of the
Philippines and was rewarded with fat commissions as an officer
in the government’s customs collection office. He worked closely
with the Intelligence Service of the AFP in building its
information stock about the CPP and NPA and updating its
concept of combat operations against the revolutionary movement.
In 2000, he was employed by the National Security Council to
lead a team that was tasked to assassinate Comrade Sison in
The Netherlands.
As organizer and head of the RPMP-RPA-ABB right after he was
expelled from the CPP and NPA, Tabara directly set himself
up as an armed adversary opposed to the CPP-led revolutionary
armed movement. He collaborated with the ruling reactionary
regime in forging a farcical peace settlement where he was
awarded P500 million pesos for “livehood and reintegration
programs.”
He allowed the RPMP-RPA-ABB to serve as a paramilitary adjunct
of the AFP and the Philippine National Police. They carried
out intelligence work, abductions and assasinations for the
AFP, participated in joint anti-NPA operations with the
military and launched their own armed attacks against the
revolutionary forces in Western Visayas, Central Luzon and
elsewhere. The RPMP-RPA-ABB has engaged in various nefarious
operations, assasinated several peasant leaders and oppressed
the peasant and worker masses by serving as goons of big
landlord-compradors such as Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco and
notorious reactionary political warlords in Masbate and
other places.
In the operations to arrest Kintanar and Tabara, the NPA
teams were fully aware that the subjects were armed and
dangerous. In the course of the operations, the two resisted
arrest with force and were killed in the ensuing battle
with the NPA arresting forces. The CPP and the NPA have
officially acknowleged and explained the circumstances of
these operations.
The revolutionary movement acted in complete accordance with
its sovereign authority to dispense justice in seeking to have
Kintanar and Tabara arrested and brought before the people’s
court.
The nature of these cases have been duly recognized as such
even by Philippine courts. It should be noted that the Supreme
Court ordered that charges for the killing of Romulo Kintanar
in 2002 and of Arturo Tabara in 2004 be subsumed in a rebellion
case against Comrade Sison and 50 others filed by the Arroyo
regime. The Supreme Court of the Philippines dismissed the
rebellion case in July this year for lack of merit.
Last September 13, the District Court of The Hague dismissed
for lack of direct and sufficient evidence the recycling in
The Netherlands of the same trumped-up and politically motivated
charges of “inciting to murder” against Comrade Sison, and
thus ordered his release.
The imperialist powers and the puppet regime remain bent on
pressing the charges and even further escalating the persecution
of Comrade Sison and other Filipino revolutionaries and patriots
they can lay their hands on.
In pursuit of their appeal before the Dutch Court of Appeals
to reverse The Hague District Court’s dismissal, the Dutch
police and prosecution officials and their local counterparts
have rushed the manufacture of more false evidence to support
the charge of “inciting to murder” and work out a more insidious
plan to trump up charges of terrorism against Comrade Sison.
They have brought in more fake witnesses including the fallguy
Delfin de Guzman whom the military has repeatedly recycled as a
witness in various cases in the past. De Guzman was abducted in
Norzagaray, Bulacan and placed under military detention since
May 11, 2006. He was used as a “witness” to claim that the
“Erap 5”—supporters of former President Joseph Estrada who
were abducted and tortured by AFP and PNP intelligence agents—were
connected with the NPA. Recently, the AFP claimed that de Guzman
masterminded the abduction of peasant activist Jonas Burgos. He
has now again been recycled and lent to the Dutch prosecution
to testify against Comrade Sison.
The insistence of the Dutch prosecution to press the charge of
“inciting to murder” and even bigger charges against Comrade
Sison has no real bases and no real evidence to prosper before
any just court.
Whatever the decision tomorrow of the Dutch Court, it is necessary
for all defenders of Comrade Sison’s democratic rights to remain
vigilant and militant and persevere in resisting the escalating
fascist attacks against him. All-out effort must continue to
be exerted to stop the persecution of Comrade Sison and the
schemes to trump up baseless charges against him and other
Filipino revolutionaries and patriots.
We reaffirm our confidence in the ultimate victory of the
people’s movement and the eventual triumph of the struggle
for national liberation, justice, democracy, peace and socialism
against imperialism and all reaction in the Philippines and the
world over.
For original website text please visit:
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/statements.pl?author=eccc;date=071002;language=eng
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