Statement from the Community Party of the Philippines

 

The Communist Party of the Philippines condemns US machinations to criminalize and persecute as "terrorists" the CPP-NPA, Comrade Sison and other legitimate revolutionaries and progressives!

 

Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines September 21, 2002

 

As the world's rogue superpower and biggest terrorist, the US has arrogated to itself the power to unilaterally unleash war and rain death and devastation on other countries and peoples. It shamelessly bullies the international community, destabilizes other states and whole regions, and threatens world peace. US imperialism is the biggest terrorist force that has ever afflicted the Filipino people. It has yet to answer for the brutal war of aggression against the Filipino people from 1899 to 1914. Its war crimes include killing, torture, forced mass evacuations and other repressive measures which claimed the lives of more than a million Filipinos, mostly unarmed civilians. Its bloody conquest of the Philippines has since paved the way for its daily violence of exploitation and oppression of the Filipino nation, in league with local lackeys.

 

[...] [T]he US is promoting wholesale state terrorism and fascism in the world to suppress rising social turmoil and revolutionary resurgence. Stricken with paranoia, it is increasing repression in the US itself and is pushing other countries, including its neocolonies, to adopt even more repressive measures against the people, especially migrants. US insistence that the Macapagal-Arroyo regime take on more and more repressive and bellicose measures in the name of "anti-terrorism" is again bringing the Philippines as close as ever to martial law.

 

The US has grown more and more wary of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines that is today at the forefront of the world anti-imperialist struggle and is gaining ground and threatening the existence of its client state. It is now increasingly intervening directly in the counter-revolutionary war in the country. To justify this, it has ridiculously designated as "foreign terrorist organizations" the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army.

 

The US is the world's biggest terrorist and yet it has the gall to label as "terrorist" and sully the fine record of a legitimate and principled revolutionary force that is arousing, organizing and mobilizing the Filipino people in a resolute struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

 

In cahoots with the Macapagal-Arroyo puppet regime, the US is making preparations for and legitimizing its outright aggression in the country with such schemes as the Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement and endless new versions of Balikatan-this time directed at CPP-NPA territories.

 

To make way for its aggression in the Philippines, the US is prejudicing the peace process and generating a climate of fear against the members, consultants and staffers and supporters of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace panel. The US has centered its attack on Comrade Jose Ma. Sison, the senior political consultant of the panel. In a US Treasury Department attachment to Executive Order no. 13224 issued on August 12, 2002, US President Bush has specifically included Comrade Sison in the list of "foreign terrorists".

 

Single-minded in its vehement hatred of revolutionaries, US imperialism is hell bent on suppressing them. US imperialism and its local lackeys know best who are their most resolute and most effective adversaries, unleashing the vilest of propaganda, the dirtiest tricks and the most brutal attacks against them. Among the prime targets today of US imperialism and its puppets are the parties and revolutionaries who are guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, particularly those carrying out and promoting people's war.

 

Because of his leading influence and significance to the political and social revolutionary movement in the Philippines as well as internationally, the US is concentrating its most vicious attack on Comrade Sison with the vain hope of decapitating the revolutionary movement in the Philippines and impeding the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and proletarian revolutionary movement to a new and higher level.

 

Being singled out for exemplary attack by the world superpower serves as an unintended tribute to Comrade Sison's sharpness and resoluteness in exposing US imperialism and its successive puppet regimes, in serving as a beacon to the national democratic and proletarian revolutionary movement in the Philippines, in reinvigorating the international proletarian revolutionary movement, as well as in supporting the peace process.

 

The Communist Party of the Philippines greatly values the contributions that Comrade Sison has given and continues to render the Philippine revolutionary movement. The Party recognizes his outstanding revolutionary role and devotion to the proletariat and people, and refutes the US' baseless charge of "terrorist" against him as well as against the Party itself, and the people's army and revolutionary movement led by the Party.

 

Riding on the US "anti-terrorist" mantra and on antidemocratic and anti-immigrant trends in the Netherlands and Europe, the Dutch government is doing the dirty work in behalf of the US government against Comrade Sison. It has done so in utter disregard of due process and with disgusting cruelty. Last month it made a cheap device at oppression by freezing his and his wife Juliet's personal accounts which has come from no source other than the Dutch state welfare agency Sociale Zaken. The highest Dutch administrative court, the Raad van State, since 1992 has considered him a political refugee. Guilty thus of double talk, this September 16 the Dutch government downgraded his political refugee status. Immediately, this has deprived him of housing, subsistence and medical support. Moreover, this has threatened his protection by the Refugee Treaty of Geneva and the European Convention from extradition to any country on the pretext of a criminal charge.

 

Some prominent Philippine government officials themselves have spilled the beans that the US is set to trump up a criminal complaint against Comrade Sison and on this basis seek his extradition to the US. The Philippine Justice Secretary has certified as far back as 1998 that no criminal charge whatsoever exists against Comrade Sison in the Philippines. The Macapagal-Arroyo regime is still in the process of forging a law specifically against "terrorism" that would target revolutionaries and their supporters much more than bandits and real terrorists. To make up for this lack, it is working to file a charge of rebellion against Comrade Sison in order to prop up the prospective criminal complaint and request of the US for his extradition.

 

The US and the puppet Macapagal-Arroyo regime are bent on working out more sinister designs and plots--including the resort to outright violence and other fascist methods--in an effort to suppress the revolutionary movement, Comrade Sison and other revolutionaries and progressives. The European Union has also adopted its own "anti-terrorist" measure. On July 15, 2002, Committee of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the European Union promulgated "anti-terrorist" guidelines which severely curtail civil liberties in much the same way as the US Patriot Act. The Party is much concerned about the dangers to Comrade Sison resulting from the devious machinations and work of the US and its allies.

 

The Party vehemently condemns the US and the puppet Macapagal-Arroyo regime for the blatant designs and machinations at interventionist and fascist schemes directed at the Party, the New People's Army and Comrade Sison, as well as against the sovereign rights and fundamental interests of the Filipino nation and people.

 

The Party calls on all Filipino patriots and on all freeedom-loving people around the world to protest and fight these designs and schemes, which are specifically aimed to clear the way for increased outright US aggression against the revolutionary movement and people of the Philippines. The Dutch government should listen to reason and reverse its unjust and cruel acts against Comrade Sison.

 

The Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary movement it leads shall never be intimidated by US military intervention, threat of aggression and dirty tricks. The revolutionary movement in the Philippines has been tempered in life-and-death struggle over so many years and against great adversities. It is resolute as ever in its self-reliant armed revolutionary struggle to attain national liberation and democracy and gain ground for the world proletarian revolution.

 

The Party's collective leadership effectively operates in the consolidated revolutionary guerilla bases in the Philippines, safely out of the immediate reach and mischief by the US and local reactionary armed forces. Filipino revolutionaries know full well that the rotten semifeudal and semicolonial system in the country is in terminal crisis and that the US itself has become mired in ever deeper crisis. The Party and the revolutionary movement are rapidly advancing and are taking advantage of increasingly favourable national and international conditions for the further advance of the revolutionary struggle.