CHRONOLOGY OF THE PERSECUTION OF PROF. JOSE MARIA SISON
Issued by the International DEFEND Committee
18 August 2007
Since his release from military detention and the
nullification of subversion and rebellion charges against him in 1986 after
the fall of the Marcos fascist dictatorship, Prof. Jose Maria Sison has
been subjected to a series of false and politically motivated
charges in 1988, 1991, 2003 and 2006. One after the other, these
charges have been dismissed and nullified by Philippine courts in 1992,
1994 and 2007. Thus, they have been proven as malicious and pure
fabrications of the Philippine military, police and intelligence
authorities.
But the Philippine, US and Dutch governments have used the
false charges to persecute Prof. Sison. The trumped-up charges of
subversion in 1988 and multiple murder in 1991 and the charges of
subversion and rebellion nullified in 1986 have been used by the Dutch
government to prevent the legal admission as refugee and residence of
Prof. Sison in The Netherlands.
Even the most unfounded propaganda attacks from the time of Marcos to 2006, which never materialized into formal complaints, have been used by the Philippine, US and Dutch
governments
to malign him as a "terrorist." These governments
do so even as Philippine prosecutors and courts dismiss and nullify the
formal complaints and charges.
1. Under the Marcos fascist dictatorship, the Philippine
government subjected Prof. Jose Maria Sison to arbitrary detention from
1977 to 1986 and to various forms of physical and mental torture,
including water cure, punching, more than five years of solitary
confinement, prolonged deprivation of basic necessities as well as
medical and dental care and repeated death threats. He was arrested and
detained without judicial warrant and was charged before two military commissions for subversion and rebellion. He was thus put in
jeopardy of being punished twice for the same alleged offense of
seeking to overthrow the Philippine government.
2. After the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, the Aquino
regime released Prof. Sison from military detention on March 5,
1986. The two charges of subversion and rebellion against him were
nullified through the dissolution of the military commissions as
organs of repression. He joined the faculty of the
Asian
Studies
Center
of the state institution, the University of thePhilippines in
April 1986. From September 1986 onwards, he went on a tour for a series
of university lectures and solidarity speeches in Oceania, Asia and Europe on the situation and prospects of the Philippines.
The Philippine military authorities publicly attacked his
lectures and pressured the Aquino regime to cancel his Philippine
passport. They trumped up a new charge of subversion against him in
September 1988.
This became the basis for the cancellation of his Philippine
passport.
3. After the arbitrary cancellation of his passport, Prof.
Sison applied for political asylum in The Netherlands in October
1988. The Dutch Ministry of Justice used the false charge of
subversion and related false claims against him from the Philippine
government as the basis for issuing a negative decision on his asylum
application in
July 1990. The US State Department admitted publicly that
the Philippine government intervened in the asylum case in order
to oppose it. But the highest administrative court, the Judicial
Department of the Council of State (Raad van State), made a judgment in
1992 annulling the unfavorable decision of the Dutch Ministry of
Justice.
It recognized Prof. Sison as a political refugee and
criticized the ministry for using secret intelligence dossiers against him
in contravention of the principle of fair administration and
for delaying for more than four years the approval of his asylum
application.
4. Despite the 1992 judgment of the Council of State, the
Dutch Ministry of Justice refused to grant asylum to Prof. Sison.
It also ignored the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law by the
Philippine government in 1992 and the consequent dismissal of the
charge of subversion against Prof. Sison by the Pasig city court and the related nullification of the specifications against him. It likewise disregarded the resolution of the Manila City prosecutors in April 1994 dismissing as something based on pure speculation the
1991complaint of multiple murder arising from the Plaza Miranda
bombing in 1971. It continued to use the false charges against Prof.
Sison and argue that to grant him asylum would run counter to the
commitment and credibility of the Dutch state to its allies. Further, it
cited raw intelligence dossiers to fabricate the claim that he is in
contact with "terrorist" organizations. It was thus already
using the "terrorist" label against him as early as in the
years from 1990 to 1994.
5. In response to the new appeal of Prof. Sison in 1993, the
Council of State, as the highest administrative court, issued in
1995 the judgment reaffirming its previous ruling that he is a
political refugee under Article 1 A of the Refugee Convention and that
he is under the protection of Article 3 of the European Convention
on Human Rights. It ruled that Article 1 F of the Refugee Convention
did not apply on him because there was no sufficient evidence
against him for crimes that would exclude him from consideration as a
refugee. It directed the Dutch Ministry of Justice to grant him legal
admission as refugee and residence permit if there was no other country
to which he could transfer without violating the Refugee Convention and
without putting him at risk of ill treatment prohibited by Article 3
of the European Convention on Human Rights. But the Dutch Ministry
of Justice ignored the judgment of the Council of State and
continued to refuse him legal admission as refugee and the permit to
reside in The Netherlands.
6. Prof. Sison appealed to the newly-created Aliens Court in
1996 against the refusal of the Dutch justice ministry to grant
him asylum. The court ordered the Dutch government to make a new
decision. The Dutch government ultimately took the position before the Law Unification Chamber (REK, Rechtseenheidkamer) that it had
the freedom of policy or discretion to refuse to Prof. Sison legal
admission as a refugee and not to give him residence permit but to cease
and desist
from expelling him from The Netherlands in order to avoid
the
violation of the principle of nonrefoulement in Article 33
of the Refugee Convention and Article 3 of the European Convention
on Human Rights. Being dependent on justice ministry personnel, funds
and facilities, the REK upheld the position of the Dutch
Ministry of Justice and dignified the brazen lie that Prof. Sison was
liable for
the false accusations of the Philippine government and for
"contacts with terrorist organizations" on the basis of
intelligence dossiers already examined and evaluated by the Raad van State in 1992
and 1995. It ran counter to the 1992 and 1995 judgments of the Raad
van State, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in
the Chahal case, the dismissal of all charges against Prof. Sison in
the Philippines from 1992 to 1994 and the total absence of any
criminal charge against him abroad.
7. In April 1998 the justice secretary of the Philippine
government issued an official certification declaring that there was no
pending criminal charge against Prof. Sison and referred to the 1992 nullification and 1993 dismissal of the 1988 charge of
subversion as well as the 1994 dismissal of the 1991 charge of multiple
murder related to the Plaza Miranda bombing. From 1994 to 2003, the Philippine government, including the military and police
authorities, took a rest from filing any formal criminal complaint against
Prof. Sison. The Philippine military authorities merely hurled
propaganda attacks against him, despite the fact that the Philippine
government had already requested the US government in November 2001 to
designate Prof. Sison as a "terrorist". It was only in 2003
that they submitted to the Department of Justice a complaint against him for the
June 2001 killing of the intelligence officer Col. Rodolfo Aquinaldo.
The Filipino lawyers of Prof. Sison succeeded in having the
complaint archived because of its patent falsity and political
motivation and because of the lack of Philippine jurisdiction over him in
the light of Philippine and international law.
8. The US government designated Prof. Sison as a
"terrorist" on August 12, 2002 and the Dutch government followed suit within 24
hours on August 13, 2002 despite the completely clean legal status of
Prof. Sison, despite the absence of any specific act of terrorism
that can be ascribed to him, despite the absence of any kind of
criminal charge or investigation involving him and despite the
Hernandez doctrine in Philippine jurisprudence concerning political
offenses and the absence then of any anti-terrorism law in the
Philippines. The "terrorist" blacklisting of Prof. Sison by the US
and other governments has placed him in a position worse than that of
a convicted murderer. He is prohibited from gainful
employment. He is deprived of his social benefits, including living allowance,
housing, medical insurance, civil liability insurance and old age
pension. His bank account is frozen. He is prevented from receiving
royalty payments for the publication of his books. He is preempted
from receiving compensation for damages due to him for winning
his human rights case against the Marcos regime. His fundamental
rights have been violated, including the right to the essential means of
human existence, the right to the presumption of innocence, the
right to defense, the right to be informed of reasons for the
sanctions, the right to judicial protection, the right to private and
family life, the right of free movement, the right against slander and
defamation and the right to be secure against threats to life and
reputation.
9. Out to please the US and Philippine governments
politically, the Dutch government, with the open lobbying of Philippine
authorities, pushed the Council of the European Union to blacklist Prof.
Sison on October 28, 2002. Two days after the blacklist decision of
the Council, the Dutch government repealed its blacklisting of
Prof. Sison but persisted in violating his fundamental rights and
causing material and moral damage to him by invoking the Council decision.
The Dutch and British governments are the main interveners in support
of the Council of the European Union in the case filed by Prof.
Sison against the Council before the European Court of First Instance in
Luxembourg since February 2003. The Dutch government is the main source
of the lies given to the court that (a) Prof. Sison is liable for "terrorism" (and not for rebellion under the
Hernandez political offense doctrine of Philippine jurisprudence) for being
allegedly the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines and head
of the New People’s Army and (b) the 1992 and 1995 judgments of the
Dutch Council of State and the 1997 judgment of the REK on his asylum case
held Prof. Sison liable for "terrorism" (contrary to
the fact that these courts recognized him as a political refugee under Article 1
A of the Refugee Convention and as someone protected by Article 3 of
the European Convention on Human Rights).
10. In 2005 Arroyo and her henchmen in the Cabinet Oversight
Committee on Internal Security and the Anti-Terrorism Task Force
started to escalate false accusations against Prof. Sison in the mass
media and pushed military officers to file baseless charges of common
crimes (like murder, robbery, kidnapping and the like) against him
in connection with incidents ascribed to the New People’s Army
in various parts of the Philippines. The campaign of slander was
obviously intended to reinforce the "terrorist" blacklisting
of Prof. Sison by various foreign governments and to justify the intensified extrajudicial killing, abduction and torture of progressive
legal activists. It was also intended to link Prof. Sison to a
broad united front of legal political forces striving to lead the people
to oust the Arroyo regime for having cheated in the presidential
elections of 2004. The filing of criminal charges against Prof. Sison
culminated in an omnibus charge of rebellion in April 21, 2006 against
him and 50 other people, including underground revolutionary
leaders, progressive congressmen and anti-Arroyo military officers.
The purported facts of the charge of rebellion covered the
entire period, from the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines
on December 26, 1968 to the filing of the charge on April 21,
2006 and disregarded the nullification of charges and the amnesty
proclamations from 1986 to 1995.
11. On April 23, 2007 the Council of the European Union sent
to Prof. Sison a letter with a one-page statement that repeats the
two lies provided by the Dutch government, as mentioned in No. 9
above. On May 22, 2007 he sent a letter of reply and told the Council that
the statement of lies had already been presented by the Council
to the European Court of First Instance, has been debunked in court
and does
not amount to a statement of reasons as required of the
Council by the court in cases of "terrorist" blacklisting. Then
the Council made a new decision on June 28, 2007 blacklisting Prof. Sison on
the basis of the aforesaid lies it had made before. This new decision of
the Council is obviously intended to serially perpetuate Prof.
Sison in the `terrorist" blacklist, continually violate his
fundamental rights,
cause material and moral damage to him and undermine or
render useless any favorable judgment of the European Court of
First Instance on his case against the Council of the European Union.
12. The European Court of First Instance issued its judgment
on the Sison case on July 11, 2007 annulling the decision of the
Council placing him on the "terrorist" list and freezing
his financial assets. The annulment is grounded on the Council’s infringement of
Prof.Sison’s right to defense, its failure to give a statement of
reasons from the second time that it blacklisted him and the
violation of his right to judicial protection. The court does not require the
Council to pay for the material and moral damages suffered by Prof.
Sison due to its decision and fails to mention that the Dutch
government has invoked the decision of the Council in order to inflict
material and moral damages on him. However, the court requires the
Council to pay for the costs of the litigation to the lawyers of Prof.
Sison as plaintiff and the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines as intervener. Insofar as it can be established that the Dutch government has directly inflicted material and moral damages
on Prof. Sison, he can take legal action to seek compensation for
such damages.But it can be expected that the Dutch government will resort
to every legal trickery to evade accountability.
13. In the meantime, Prof. Sison has won a resounding legal
victory in the Philippines. The Philippine Supreme Court issued on July
2, 2007 a judgment nullifying the omnibus charge of rebellion and
all the supposed evidence from 1968 to 2006 against Prof. Sison and
his 50 other co-accused. In effect, the supposed evidence cannot be
used again against all or any of them in any new charge. The
solicitor general has publicly admitted that the value of the state’s
stock of purported evidence has been wiped out. This is the latest
instance when Prof. Sison is cleared of a criminal charge. It
previously happened in 1986, 1992, 1994 and 1998. At this moment, the
Philippine and foreign governments persecuting Prof. Sison should be at
a loss in holding him liable for any criminal offense or any semblance
of this.
The Philippine government can fabricate a charge of
rebellion against Prof. Sison only from the date after April 21, 2006 and a
charge of "terrorism" from July 15, 2007 which is the date
the Human Security Act of 2007 became effective. However, the Human Security
Act of 2007 is now under fire by a broad range of democratic
forces, human rights organizations and legal experts in the Philippines
and abroad for being patently unconstitutional.
Prof. Sison has won a significant legal victory with the
July 11, 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance. But he
still needs to complete his legal victory by contending with the
preemptive June 28, 2008 decision of the Council retaining him in the
"terrorist" blacklist and by filing a new application for annulment of
said decision insofar as he is concerned. He still has to defend
his fundamental rights and demand compensation for the material
and moral damages inflicted on him.
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 defend the fundamental rights of Prof.
Sison and other victims of the global trend of fascisation and
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, greater freedom, social justice, development and world peace!!!
Fore reference:
Ruth de Leon
International Coordinator
International DEFEND Committee
Email: defenddemrights@ yahoo.com
Telephone: 00-31-30-8895306
Website: www.defendsison. be
