PRESS STATEMENTS & INTERVIEWS, 2001 - Present

 June 2002

Interview with Jose Maria Sison
By the Turkish Newspaper Umut Yayimcilik

A: Yes, I agree with your view that the imperialist offensive continues and has even intensified using various buzzwords like "globalisation", "new world order" and "war on terror". At the same time, the political and economic crisis of imperialism continues to aggravate.

The US is absolutely wrong in using the September 11 attacks as pretext for labeling as "terrorist" the communists, national liberation movements, oppressed peoples and certain states assertive of independence. It is the US that is unleashing the most horrible kinds of terrorism.

In fact, US imperialism is the No.1 terrorist force in the world and in the entire history of mankind. It has killed several millions of people since the time it killed 1.4 million Filipinos from 1899 to 1916 in the course of its war of aggression against the Filipino people.

The wars of aggression launched by the US in Korea, Indochina, Iraq, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and elsewhere and the massacres perpetrated by repressive US puppet regimes are all conspicuous acts of terrorism. The daily violence of capitalist explolitation, especially under the neoliberal terms of imperialist globalisation, constitutes terrorism, victimizing countless numbers of people throughout the world.

The terrorism of the US imperialists is far more monstrous that that of the September 11 plane hijackers. According to the US itself, the latter originated from so-called Islamic fundamentalists working for the US against the Soviet social-imperialists and then becoming disgruntled with the US over the carnage of the Palestinian people by the US-supported Israeli Zionists and over the military and financial impositions of the US on Saudi Arabia.

A: By claiming to wage a global war on terrorism, the US is threatening the oppressed peoples in the semicolonial and semifeudal countries and is actually engaging in military intervention and aggression in order to expand its hegemony and extract superprofits.

In the particular case of the Philippines, the US has deployed more than 3800 US combat troops there under the pretext of going after a small bandit gang called Abu Sayyaf, which the US and the Macapagal-Arroyo regime accuse of belonging to Al Qaida. In fact, the US Central Intelligence Agency, in collaboration with Filipino reactionary military officers, created the Abu Sayyaf in the early 1990’s.

US imperialism is directing and joining the Philippine reactionary armed forces in intensifying military campaigns of suppression against the Filipino people and revolutionary forces led by the CPP as well as against the Moro people who are fighting for self-determination.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is carrying out the program for a people’s democratic revolution. It is determined to complete the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local reactionary classes. The CPP is therefore struggling against the US military intervention, which is aimed at tightening US economic, military and political control over the Philippines.

As a result of the US military intervention and the escalating military campaigns of suppression by the puppet military forces, the Filipino people and revolutionary forces are intensifying the revolutionary armed struggle and other forms of struggle.

A: The international communist movement and the broad anti-imperialist movement are steadily gaining strength and advancing because the proletariat and the rest of the people in the world are resisting the intensifying exploitation and oppression under imperialist globalisation.

The Marxist-Leninist parties are taking the lead in struggling against imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction. They are carrying forward the struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

The broad international united front of the people against imperialism is also gaining ground. A fresh advance in building a broad anti-imperialist solidarity is the recent formation of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS).

A: The revolutionary movement in the Philippines is going strong. The Second Great Rectification Movement has been victorious in reaffirming basic revolutionary principles, overcoming errors and shortcomings and in revitalizing the revolutionary forces and the people.

The CPP has some tens of thousands of members. It leads the New People’s Army (NPA), which has thousands of Red fighters, as its principal weapon in waging protracted people’s war. The NPA operates in 127 guerrilla fronts that cover portions of more than 90 percent of the Philippine provinces. It wages intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of ever widening and deepening mass base.

The CPP has built mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals and other sectors of the people. The members of these mass organizations run into millions. They constitute the mass base of the revolutionary forces.

The CPP amplifies its strength by skillfully wielding the united front as a revolutionary weapon and using tactics of the united front. It builds an echelon of alliances in order to isolate and destroy the enemy at every given period. These alliances include the following: the basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry, the progressive alliance of the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of the aforesaid forces and the middle bourgeoisie and the temporary and unstable alliance with the lesser reactionaries against the enemy.

Using both weapons of armed struggle and united front, the CPP has won significant victories in armed and legal forms of struggle. Recently, it was instrumental in overthrowing the US-Estrada regime through a broad united front. The broad united front is now directed against the US-Arroyo regime.

The revolutionary forces aim to strengthen themselves by seeking to overthrow one reactionary ruling clique after another and thereby accumulate strength until they reach the capability to overthrow the entire ruling system.

A: The Maoists have assumed the duty of rebuilding the international communist movement, strengthening the broad anti-imperialist movement and waging protracted people’s war wherever possible, especially in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the retrogressive countries betrayed by revisionists.

The Maoists have the most comprehensive grasp of the past, present and future of the world proletarian revolution. They understand the principles and methods of revolution, as taught by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, up to the theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship. They therefore have confidence in moving forward in the revolution.

Such confidence is necessary at a time that the revolutionary people and forces are still striving to overcome the adverse effects of the revisionist betrayal of socialism. Led by the Maoists, the proletariat and people of the world are at the initial stage of carrying out a counteroffensive against the ideological and political offensive of the imperialists that have gloated over the fall of the revisionist regimes in the 1989-91 period.

A. I wish the proletariat and people of the Philippines and Turkey to strengthen their revolutionary bonds under the guidance of both proletarian internationalism and broad anti-imperialist solidarity.

In both countries, the domestic ruling system is in grave crisis. This is connected with the ever-worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. The objective conditions are therefore favorable for the advance of the revolution in both Turkey and the Philippines.

It is necessary and urgent for the revolutionary forces and the peoples of both countries to continually exchange views and experience in order to raise their common understanding and cooperation. Their revolutionary advances are of global significance and consequence because their countries are major outposts of US imperialism. #