CHAIRPERSON OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PHILIPPINES (CPP), ARRESTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

THE GUERRILLA IS LIKE A POET
-Jose Maria Sison

The guerrilla is like a poet
Keen to the rustle of leaves
The break of twigs
The ripples of the river
The smell of fire
And the ashes of departure.
The guerrilla is like a poet.
He has merged with the trees
The bushes and the rocks
Ambiguous but precise
Well-versed on the law of motion
And master of myriad images.

The guerrilla is like a poet
Enrhymed with nature
The subtle rhythm of the greenery
The inner silence, the outer innocence
The steel tensile in-grace
That ensnares the enemy.
The guerrilla is like a poet.
He moves with the green brown multitude
In bush burning with red flowers
That crown and hearten all
Swarming the terrain as a flood
Marching at last against the stronghold.
An endless movement of strength
Behold the protracted theme:
The people's epic, the people's war.
(written in 1968)

The Dutch government arrested Jose Maria Sison on August 28, 2007. He was removed from his residence in Utrecht and brought to the Hague. Professor Sison's office and home were raided and ransacked as well as the homes of 7 other progressive Filipinos and the NDFP office by the International Crime Investigation Team of the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department.

He is now under their custody. "The communist leader was suspected of giving orders, from the Netherlands, to murder his former political associates in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara," the Dutch national prosecutor's office said in a statement quoted in an AFP report.WHO IS JOSE MARIA SISON?Jose Maria Sison led the re-founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the late 1960s. The CPP formed the New People's Army in 1969. It undertook people's war of the kind pioneered by Mao Zedong in China, in which the working class leads and the peasantry is the main force. Comrade Sison led the struggle in the rural areas until he was captured by the dictatorial Marcos regime in 1976. He spent nine years in solitary confinement. He was only released when Marcos' regime was forced out by the masses in 1985. Though Marcos fell his generals remained. Comrade Sison and others were forced into exile in the Netherlands where they remain to this day.Last year the U.S. government put Comrade Sison and the NPA on their "terrorist" list. The U.S. then prevailed on the Dutch government to do the same.

However, they in truth are the leaders of the oppressed masses in their struggle against a backward and rotting social order. The "terrorist" label cost Comrade Sison the economic benefits he had received as a political refugee. A worldwide movement in his support demands that he be taken off these hypocritical lists, instigated by the world's worst terrorist, U.S. imperialism.

The long people's war in the Philippines has had ups and downs, but in recent years has grown to the point where the reactionaries now consider it an acute challenge to their rule (New York Times of January 4, 2004, "Fear of a Communist Rebellion Is Growing in the Philippines"). It seems that the Dutch government has taken off its masks and has finally succumbed to the pressures of U.S. imperialism, and its lackey, comprador government of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Manila.

The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison has been living in exile ever since his release from the Filipino jails after the overthrow of Marcos dictatorship in 1987, and has been a legitimate refugee claimant in the Netherlands ever since. He has been the Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), especially to the NDFP Negotiating Panel in the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP, which have been going on for several years now in the neutral territory of Norway.

These negotiations had already resulted in several bilateral binding agreements.Sison has also been an international leading figure in the global struggles against imperialism as the Chairperson of the International League of People's Struggles, with active chapters in many parts of the world.

Thus it was hardly surprising that Jose Maria Sison (Joma, as he is popularly known) fell under the sweeping scanner of George Bush and was declared a "terrorist", as has been the case with a large number of individuals and people's organizations around the world who had been engaged in struggles for sovereignty and against the onslaught of imperialist forces.

The Dutch government, backed by the EU governments, promptly froze Joma's meager bank accounts and cut him off all the entitlements a refugee claimant in the Netherlands has. The issue was fought in the European Union's Court of Justice, which only a few months ago had ruled in Sison's favour, unfreezing of his assets.

Faced with this legal slap the Dutch government, undoubtedly taking cues from Washington, has gone to the farthest extreme and has arrested Jose Maria Sison. We expect that the Philippine, US and Dutch governments will continue to persecute Prof. Jose Maria Sison by using against him their political power and the existing fascist "anti-terrorism" laws and decisions that they have devised in order to justify state terrorism and wars of aggression. We need to continue and intensify both the political and legal struggles of democratic forces and the people of the world in order to defend the fundamental rights of Prof. Sison and other victims of the global trend of aggressive wars generated by the imperialist powers and their reactionary puppets.

We must struggle to stop immediately the persecution of progressive leaders like Prof. Jose Maria Sison and the suppression of anti-imperialist and democratic forces and peoples fighting for national liberation, freedom, social justice, and a world free of exploitation.

source-dsujnu.blogspot.com