|
Press Statement
December 26, 2004
Character
Assassination and Cheap Shots|
by Rabid Anti-Communists and Pseudo-Revolutionaries
By Prof. Jose Maria
Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
The article of Juan
Sarmiento of Inquirer New Service, titled “Communist Party ‘hit list’
denounced” and dated December 26,
2004, refers to an open letter to
me as CPP founder from Walden Bello and Etta Rosales, supposedly asking me
the accusatory rhetorical question, “Does this mean you intend to kill us
one by one?”
I have not yet
received the letter and I expect Sarmiento or the letter writers
themselves to forward it to me, especially after giving it wide publicity.
I am making this statement only as a prompt response to Sarmiento’s
article. I intend to answer the letter directly and fully as soon as I
receive a copy of it, unless its full substance is already reported by
Sarmiento.
He reports that Bello
and Rosales have extrapolated and concluded that they and others are the
targets of a “hit list” of the New People’s Army on the basis of a diagram
made by the CPP International Department to show the ideological and
political connections of certain pseudo-revolutionary grouplets in the
Philippines to
various Trotskyite and social democratic groups and parties abroad.
Consequent to the
article of Sarmiento, I have revisited the diagram in question which
appears in the December 7, 2004 issue of Ang Bayan, as published in the
website:
www.philippinerevolution.org Any honest reader can see for himself or
herself that this diagram is nothing more than a presentation of the
fragmentation of pseudo-revolutionary petty bourgeois grouplets in the
Philippines and their connections mainly with various Trotskyite factions
abroad. It is not at all a list of criminal suspects subject to arrest and
investigation by the NPA and other proper authorities of the revolutionary
government.
It is a gross act of
mendacity, malice and slander to misrepresent the diagram as a “hit list”
and to use the misrepresentation in order make me the target of character
assassination. The purported letter writers are obviously engaged in a
spin or psywar operation. This is orchestrated with similar operations of
the military propaganda mills and is timed with the 36th
anniversary of the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the
Philippines. There is an overall attempt to distract public attention from
the full message of the CPP Central Committee, now appearing in the
aforesaid website, and to malign the CPP.
Since November, I
have been preoccupied with my duties as the newly-elected chairperson of
the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) as well as pursuing
my complaints against the Dutch government and the European Council in
connection with the “terrorist” listing initiated by the US upon the
prompting of the Arroyo regime. As NDFP chief political consultant, I have
also been occasionally involved in some back channel communications with
certain Oslo and Manila officials regarding the GRP-NDFP peace
negotiations.
The malicious letter
writers are assisting the US
in maligning and criminalizing me, setting me up for physical attacks by
the CIA and sabotaging the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. My first impulse
has been to ignore the Sarmiento article because the lie reported is so
blatantly false and the malicious intent to smear me so obvious. But I
have decided to confront the lie because it can do harm one way or the
other to myself and to others, including the purported letter writers.
Based on my
experience, I do not think that the revolutionary forces would take any
punitive action against anyone just because he or she holds
pseudo-revolutionary or even blatantly counterrevolutionary ideas. The
revolutionary movement respects the freedom of thought and expression. As
so many documents issued by the revolutionary movement declare, it can
seek to punish only criminal acts like murder, espionage, gross
malversation and robbery. These are the criminal offenses for which Romulo
Kintanar and Arturo Tabara were held responsible, as Ka Roger of the CPP
Information Department has pointed out.
But I do worry about
the malicious letter writers and their kind, not because the revolutionary
forces might hold them culpable for crimes which can be proven in the
people’s court but because the murderous type of rabid anti- communists in
the military and police might harm these pseudo-revolutionaries and then
blame the crime on the revolutionary forces.
Since the 1960s, we
have come to know of instances of the most rabid anti-communists in the
military and police engaging in bloody crimes of intrigue.They kill
certain persons or make them disappear and then make the revolutionaries
the scapegoat. Oplan Jericho was specially designed by US and puppet
officers in 1988 to kill me in the Philippines or abroad and then put the
blame on communists. I am in receipt of information that no less than a
cabinet member suggested in a meeting of the national security division of
the Arroyo cabinet that I be assassinated.
The malicious letter
writers are either playing into the hands of the most bloodthirsty
elements in the reactionary establishment and are unwittingly making
themselves patsies or they are assured by their handlers in the US and
puppet intelligence and psywar agencies that they can get political and
financial benefits from the acts of state terrorism now being unleashed
against the people and all genuinely patriotic and progressive forces in
the Philippines.
BACK TO TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2004 Bulatlat
■ Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified. |
