Joma expects EU to retain ‘terrorist’ tag on CPP-NPA

TARLAC CITY— Self-exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison said yesterday that he now expects the European Union and the Dutch government "to take further actions" against him following Washington’s decision to keep the country’s mainstream communist movement in its international anti-terrorist watch-list.

Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), was speaking from his foreign rebel home base in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Sison also said other self-exiled rebel leaders in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe even expect that measures will be taken to make their work for the rebel movement "difficult and too risky."

This, he added, will have adverse effects on the operations of the National Democratic Front (NDF), the CPP’s underground political wing mainly based in Utrecht, and whose peace panel is holding formal talks with the Philippine government.

Sison also acts as the NDF panel’s chief political consultant.

Early this month, the US government decided to keep the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), on its list of "foreign terrorist organizations."

It was in late 2002 when the White House labeled the CPP-NPA a terrorist group, a move followed by the Council Common of the 15-nation EU and the Dutch government.

Although Sison has been seeking asylum in Europe due to alleged "political persecution" in the Philippines, Dutch authorities suspended all financial, social, housing and medical benefits previously extended to Sison as a "political refugee."

Malacañang has been holding formal peace negotiations with the NDF, which is representing the entire communist movement.

By now, Sison claimed, the Dutch government is allegedly "preventing the establishment and operation of the NDF side of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC)," referring to the body that was formed in Manila early last June that now oversees the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

The CARHRIHL was the pact sealed between government and rebel negotiators when they concluded in the late 1990s discussions on the talks’ first substantive agenda, which was for both state and rebel forces to respect human rights and international war protocols in the conduct of the armed conflict.