[Ppnews] Filipino Revolutionary, Cleared of EU “Terrorist” Charge

[Political Prisoner News]

Filipino Revolutionary, Cleared of EU “Terrorist” Charge, Arrested in Holland

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/filipino-revolutionary-cleared-of-eu-%e2%80%9cterrorist%e2%80%9d-charge-arrested-in-holland/

by Gary Leupp / September 3rd, 2007

On the morning of August 28, Dutch plainclothes 
police raided the home of exiled Filipino 
revolutionary leader Jose Maria Sison in Utrecht, 
the Netherlands, 
<http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2007-08August28-JomaArrested/dutcharrestjms.htm>arrested 
him and charged him with ordering the murder of 
two persons in the Philippines in 2003. According 
to his wife, they broke down the front door 
without bothering to ring or knock, bruising her 
arm as they prevented her from making a phone 
call. They carted away computers, documents, CDs, 
and other files, remaining until the evening 
while she was instructed to sit in a corner. 
Eight other locations were simultaneously raided. 
Sison was not at home the time. Luis Jalandoni, 
the chief peace negotiator for the Filipino 
Maoist rebels in their talks with the Government 
of the Philippines, details what happened:

“The Dutch Police called up Prof. Sison to invite 
him to the police station because according to 
them there were new developments on the complaint 
that Prof. Sison had filed in 2001. Thinking that 
it was about the complaint he filed on an 
assassination plot that was hatched by the then 
incumbent [Joseph] Estrada government against 
him, Prof. Sison brought with him some documents 
pertinent to the said complaint.

“But when he arrived at the police station, he 
was separated from his three companions that 
included his lawyer. They learned later that 
Prof. Sison had been whisked away to a jail 
complex in Scheveningen formerly used by the 
Nazis for detaining Dutch resistance fighters on 
the patently spurious charge of ordering the 
murder of [Arturo] Kintanar and [Romulo] Tabara.”

Sison remains in the National Penitentiary in 
Scheveningen in The Hague where the judge before 
whom he appeared August 31 states he will remain 
in solitary confinement for up to 14 days. 
According to his lawyer, Jan Fermon, the official 
charge against him is “incitement to murders” in 
the Philippines. Its proximate cause, according 
to the Philippines mainstream press, was 
affidavits filed with the Philippines Department 
of Justice last year by the wives of Kintanar and 
Tabara (themselves former communists expelled 
from the movement) followed by visits to the Dutch Embassy in Manila.

Sison has lived in Holland since 1987. The 
68-year-old former professor of English 
literature and accomplished poet headed the newly 
refounded Communist Party of the Philippines from 
1968 to 1977. During these years the party’s 
military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA), made 
extraordinary advances in its People’s War to 
topple the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Ferdinand 
Marcos. Captured by Marcos’ troops in 1977, Sison 
spent years in prison, including a year and a 
half strapped to a cot, in solitary confinement 
before he was released in 1986 by President 
Corazon Aquino following the “People Power” 
revolution that drove Marcos and his notorious 
wife Imelda out of the country. Since then he has 
served as chairman of the International League of 
Peoples Struggle, and Chief Political Consultant 
to the National Democratic Front of the 
Philippines in its off-again on-again peace talks with the Manila government.

The CPP has stated for 20 years that Sison is no 
longer involved in operational decisions and 
serves from Europe in an advisory role. In 1986, 
after he was freed from prison, Sison embarked on 
a world lecture tour. In October he accepted the 
Southeast Asia WRITE award for a book of his 
poems from the Crown Prince of Thailand in 
Bangkok. While visiting the Netherlands three 
months later, he was informed that his passport 
had been revoked and that charges had been filed 
against him under the Anti-Subversion Law of the 
Philippines. Those charges were later dropped, as 
have subsequent charges filed by authorities in the Philippines.

But meanwhile the New People’s Army has acquired 
control of about 8000 villages and perhaps 20% of 
the Philippines countryside. (It claimed as of 
2003 to have 128 guerrillas zones, covering 60% 
of the villages in the country.) Since 2004, the 
Armed Forces of the Philippines have designated 
the NPA “Number One security threat” to the 
nation (i.e., greater than the Muslim 
secessionist forces or the allegedly 
al-Qaeda-linked puny bandit group Abu Sayyaf). 
The U.S. government, alarmed by communist 
advances, moved immediately after 9-11 (which 
helped justify moves against any kind of 
“terrorism” anywhere in the world) to dispatch 
troops to the Philippines in what was briefly 
billed as the “second front” in the “War on 
Terror.” The ostensible target was Abu Sayyaf, 
although the Filipino Maoists suggested that U.S. 
forces (expelled by an act of the Philippines 
Senate in 1992 but now invited back by 
Macapagal-Arroyo) might ultimately be deployed against them.

In August 2002, U.S. Secretary of State Colin 
Powell announced with some fanfare that it had 
decided to declare Sison a “terrorist.” The CPP 
as well as the NPA were already on the list of 
“foreign terrorist organizations” prepared by the 
State Department and rubber-stamped by Congress every two years.

To make the list one has to (1) be foreign, (2) 
engage in terrorist activity, and (3) threaten 
the security of U.S. citizens or U.S. “national 
security.” “Terrorist activity” according to 
Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and 
Nationality Act of 1952 defines this as “any 
activity which is unlawful under the laws of the 
place where it is committed (or which, if 
committed in the United States, would be unlawful 
under the laws of the United States or any 
State)” involving hijacking or sabotage of any 
aircraft, vessel, or vehicle; kidnapping; violent 
attacks on “internationally protected” persons; 
assassination; use of biological, chemical, or 
nuclear weapons; use of explosives or firearms 
“with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, 
the safety of one or more individuals or cause 
substantial damage to property;” and/or the 
threat, attempt or conspiracy to do any of the 
above, or to incite people to do so, or to 
collect information on potential terrorist 
targets, or to collect funds for terrorist attacks.

By this definition, any violent rebellion against 
any government­however oppressive and 
illegitimate­anywhere is “terrorist,” or can be 
so defined at the whim of a State Department the 
entire world associates with lawless violence. 
(It would have criminalized the American 
Revolution, for god’s sake, and smeared the 
Founding Fathers as “terrorists.”) But Powell’s 
explanation for the blacklisting of the CPP and 
Sison was specifically as follows: “The CPP, a 
Maoist group, was founded in 1969 [sic] with the 
aim of overthrowing the Philippine government 
through guerrilla warfare. CPP’s military wing, 
the New People’s Army strongly opposes any U.S. 
military presence in the Philippines and has 
killed U.S. citizens there.” (These allegedly 
include a U.S. Army colonel, a military 
intelligence agent, two U.S. Air Force airmen, 
and two Ford Corporation employees over many 
years during which the U.S. stationed military 
forces in the Philippines and actively aided the 
Marcos regime and its successors in efforts to crush the insurgency.)

Taking their cue from the U.S. State Department, 
the Council of the European Union (comprised of 
the E.U. foreign ministers) added the CPP and 
Sison to their own terror lists. On September 10, 
2002 Sison was informed that in accordance with 
the Netherlands’ “sanction regulation against 
terrorism” his benefits had been terminated and 
his bank account frozen. He was also ordered to 
report weekly to a government office, where he 
had reported monthly for over a decade. This 
despite the fact that there were no pending 
criminal charges against him anywhere in the 
world. The city of Utrecht, in which he resides, 
offered resumption of his stipend on 
“humanitarian” grounds, but only if he implicitly 
accepted the designation of “terrorist” applied to himself.

The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs explained 
the decision. “The U.S. regards the activities of 
the CPP/NPA and Sison as a threat for American 
citizens and for the national security of the 
American foreign policy. The CPP is characterized 
by a strong anti-American attitude. The 
organization is a fervent opponent of the 
pro-American policy of the current Philippine 
government and the presence of American troops in 
the country. In the 80s and 90s, six Americans 
died in NPA attacks.” In other words, the U.S. 
was applying strong pressure on Amsterdam to 
demonize and punish Sison for his “attitude,” his 
opposition to the government of Gloria 
Macapagal-Arroyo, and his association with an 
organization accused of killing members of the 
U.S. military supporting the Manila regime.

In a stunning setback to U.S. vilification 
efforts, that decision was annulled by the 
European Court of First Instance (ECFI)­the EU’s 
Supreme Court­just a month and a half ago (on 
July 12). The Luxemburg-based ECFI concluded that 
Sison had never undergone any criminal 
investigation by any competent judicial authority 
concerning any terrorist act. It stated that EU 
Council decisions regarding Sison up to June 29, 
2007 were “violative of the rights of Professor 
Sison,” and even ordered the EU to shoulder Sison’s legal costs.

In a statement issued on July 13, Sison noted 
that in “the Philippines, I have been repeatedly 
cleared of criminal charges. At the fall of the 
Marcos fascist regime in 1986, I was cleared of 
the charges of rebellion and subversion. In 1992 
the charge of subversion that had been trumped up 
in 1988 was nullified. In 1994 the charge of 
multiple murder arising from the Plaza Miranda 
bombing [in 1971, in which 8 members of the 
Liberal Party were killed, and which was used by 
the Marcos government as the pretext to declare 
martial law] was dismissed by the Manila 
prosecutors as something based on speculation. In 
1998 the Philippine secretary of justice issued a 
certification that there were no pending criminal charges against me.

“In 2003, the Arroyo regime started to fabricate 
charges of rebellion and common crimes against 
me. But in a recent decision in early this month, 
the Philippine Supreme Court has rendered null 
and void the identical false allegations of 
rebellion against more than 50 accused, including 
the Batasan 6, some NDFP [National Democratic 
Front of the Philippines] legal consultants and myself.”

These legal defeats of the Philippines government 
headed by the grotesquely corrupt President 
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and of the 
U.S.-orchestrated attack on Sison in Europe form 
the backdrop of this latest move against the 
Maoist leader. This time he’s accused of 
responsibility for the killings of Tabara and 
Kintanar, two former Maoists (expelled from the 
CPP in the early 1990s) killed in 2003 and 2004 
by the NPA in actions for which the guerrillas 
indeed take responsibility. They were proponents 
of a strategy of urban guerrilla warfare, 
especially in Davao City, using NPA “Sparrows” to 
attack military and police personnel during the 
1980s. The urban guerrilla strategy was 
predictably condemned in the harshest terms by 
the Filipino and western governments at the time, 
and it is curious to see them bemoaning the fate 
of the deceased whom they would surely at the 
time have denounced as terrorists. All the more 
curious because the CPP seem to agree with that assessment.

Gregorio Rosal, spokesperson for the Communist 
Party of the Philippines, stated in a five-page 
statement to the Philippines media in 2004 that 
the NPA metes out the death penalty “only on 
those found guilty beyond reasonable doubt” of 
having committed heinous crimes. He said that a 
People’s Court had tried Kintanar in 1993 and 
declared him 
<http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-50/2-50-Kintanar.html>guilty 
of several crimes and listed them as follows:

1. Masterminding, launching and propagating 
gangster operations, including kidnap-for-ransom, 
bank holdups, and dollar-counterfeiting 
operations while still in the CPP. He cited as 
examples the kidnapping of Japanese businessman 
Noboyuki Wakaoji in 1986 and Bombo 
Radyo-Philippines owner Roger Florete in 1989 
where Kinatanar and his men allegedly earned $10 
million and P15 million in ransom, respectively.
2. Stealing massive amounts of funds from the Party.
3. Instigating factionalism and attempts to 
destroy the revolutionary movement.

The CPP has further charged that Kintanar was an 
“intelligence agent of the [Manila] government’s 
military and police since 1992,” and was a 
“project officer in an assassination plot against 
Prof. Jose Maria Sison in the Netherlands” in 
2000 (to which Jalandoni alludes above, and to 
which Sison has brought Dutch authorities’ attention).

Tabara, according to the Maoists, was apprehended 
by CPP officials in a parking lot on Sept. 26, 
2004. He pulled a gun when they attempted to 
arrest him for murdering an elderly peasant 
leader and they shot him to death. This happened 
in a society in which the regime in power employs 
death squads. The human rights group Karapatan 
states that more than 800 left-wing activists 
have been extra-judicially killed since 2001. The 
Bush administration makes no fuss about that, or 
the fact that there were 1200 people on death row 
in the Philippines in June 2006 when the 
Philippines Congress passed a law banning the 
death penalty. The official justice system in the 
Philippines is widely perceived as fraudulent. 
But the U.S. and its allies validate it while 
treating the people’s courts as illegitimate and 
tools of terrorists answering to Sison in his Utrecht exile.

This is the context of Sison’s arrest. It is not 
about some “murders” in the Philippines. It’s 
about cracking down on the People’s War in the 
Philippines, which has made some major strides in 
the last few years. It’s about U.S. pressure on 
Europe to kowtow to its broad concept of 
“terrorism” and to exhaust the potential of the 
paranoia it’s whipped up to demonize any 
“anti-American” target anywhere. 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp0619.html>I 
suggested as early as June 2002 that there would 
be “red targets in the Terror War” and Sison has 
been for some time a high-profile target.

His arrest in Holland, surely with the 
encouragement of the Bush administration, is not 
just an attack on a distinguished leader but a 
warning to all who sympathize with the global 
revolutionary left and its armed struggles. 
Meanwhile the “terrorist” designation can be 
flexibly applied to anyone Washington wants to 
set up. The State Department is reportedly about 
to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guards­a whole 
branch of a country’s military­a “terrorist 
organization.” This is a huge leap from targeting 
violent non-state organizations with the label. 
Reportedly the Europeans regard this step as 
provocative and worrisome. (It paves the way, 
among other things, for U.S. forces to treat the 
Revolutionary Guards as “illegal combatants” not 
covered by the Geneva Conventions, hence subject 
to torture in the event of war with Iran.) But 
it’s the natural culmination of the Bush/Cheney 
fear-mongering, blackballing strategy.

What’s next? Declaring the Cuban militia 
“terrorist”? The whole Venezuelan or Russian or 
Chinese Army? One recalls the medieval Church 
declaring this or that “anathema” or heretical, 
marked by Satanism or witchcraft. Such verdicts 
were intended to spell death for those so marked, 
and to intimidate and silence any inclined to 
defend them if they stubbornly resisted the 
legitimacy of the judge. Sometimes they were 
applied to whole nations. One would think such 
pontifical arrogance had died centuries ago. But 
here we have it again in the thuggish U.S. 
administration trying yet failing to secure the 
world’s obedience using tactics resembling both 
those of the Inquisition and those of the 
terror-inflicting fascists in the 1930s.

As Maoists movements press on, especially in 
South Asia, Marxists of all stripes may 
increasingly come into Washington’s crosshairs, 
alongside those that it chooses to term “Islamist 
terrorists.” The U.S. government continues to 
categorize the Nepali Maoists as terrorists, even 
though they have laid aside their arms for the 
time being and assumed posts in the new Nepali 
government. It must note with alarm news of a 
Maoist People’s War unfolding in the small but 
strategically located country of 
<http://burning.typepad.com/burningman/2007/08/bhutan-red-army.html>Bhutan. 
While it coddles the Cuban anti-Castro terrorist 
Luis Posada Carriles, supports Jundallah (God’s 
Brigade) in attacks on Iran, and continues a long 
tradition of support for other pro-U.S. 
terrorists including the notorious Contras of 
Nicaragua, Washington zeroes in revolutionaries 
like Sison, enraged that they with their undying 
rebellious spirit still exist in this world it 
feels it owns, in which it demands the right to monopolize terror.

* * * * *

Several Filipino Congressmen have rallied to 
Sison’s defense. Rep. Satur Ocampo of the Bayan 
Muna Party (himself arrested on bogus, 
decades-old murder charges in March but then 
released) has suggested that the Arroyo 
government wants to sabotage the peace talks. His 
colleague from the same party, Rep. Teddy Casiño, 
agreed. The arrest “will result in an all-out war 
and lead to the end of peace negotiations,” he 
declares. Ocampo charges that the Dutch and 
Philippine governments are “conniving” against 
Sison, and that “[t]here seems to be an 
irregularity in the arrest, although I’m not 
familiar with their procedures. But it looks like 
from our practice here, it only means they are 
looking for evidence when they also raided his 
office and confiscated all the materials there.” 
Rep. Crispin Beltran said the Dutch government 
erroneously arrested Sison on “preposterous” 
charges designed “to sabotage the chances of peace talks and attack the NDF.”

Meanwhile Dutch and Filipino supporters are 
organizing a petition campaign. Hastily arranged 
demonstrations have occurred in the Philippines, 
Netherlands, U.S. (New York and L.A.) and Hong 
Kong. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark 
has offered his services as an attorney, 
describing Sison as “a gentle person
 and 
inspiring leader” and “great man.” “Everyone who 
is concerned about peace and freedom has to be 
greatly distressed over the arrest of Joma 
Sison,” he told members of the New York Committee 
for Human Rights in the Philippines last week. 
“Sison is a great spirit that the world needs to 
know about, a great voice that the world needs to 
hear. The demonization will destroy us if we permit it to continue.”

It’s heartening that a former U.S. attorney 
general, predecessor to the unsavory likes of 
John Mitchell, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and 
Alberto Gonzales, can still say such things 
openly in these proto-fascist times. It suggests 
that the lawlessness infecting our own legal 
system (especially since 9-11, and justified by 
carefully fanned “terrorism” fears)­a bullying 
lawlessness that infects allies’ legal systems 
and the operations of a compromised UN­is not 
unchallengeable or needs to intimidate all who 
feel disgusted by the demonization and lies. 
Clark (79) who once served President Lyndon 
Johnson at the height of the Vietnam War somehow 
evolved into a trenchant critic of imperialism. 
That gives his word all the more weight for 
anyone concerned about peace and freedom and inclined to listen.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct 
Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts 
University, and author of numerous works on 
Japanese history. He can be reached at: 
gleupp at granite.tufts.edu. 
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/author/GaryLeupp/>Read other articles by Gary.




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