URGENT CALL FOR PROTEST ACTION

Free Prof. Jose Maria Sison!

Incredible as it may appear Professor Jose Maria Sison, the Chairman of the International Coordinating Committee of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) was arrested in Utrecht, the Netherlands on August 28, 2007 by the Dutch police.

Prof. Sison was arrested by Dutch authorities under the false charges that he ordered the murder of three individuals in the Philippines. These are fabricated charges concocted by the regime of Mrs. Arroyo and its counter insurgency police in the Philippines. These are the same charges that were categorically dismissed by the Philippines High Court on July 11, 2007 for lack of any evidence.

Simultaneous with the arrest of Prof. Sison the Dutch police raided his house, the international offices National Democratic Front of Philippines (NDFP) and the houses of other Filipino militants. In some of these raids the police violently broke down the doors to enter and search the premises. They confiscated computers CDs, DVDs and other files supposedly to help them with their investigations.

Following his arrest Professor Jose Maria Sison, was moved to The Hague and continues to be under interrogation by the Dutch Police. According to DEFEND he will be brought to court for a hearing on Friday August 31 in order to consider further possible detention by the Dutch authorities.

Clearly, the arrest of the Professor Sison by the Dutch authorities is politically motivated and is directly linked to the relentless attempts of the US backed puppet regime of Arroyo in the Philippines and its master, US imperialism to bring an end to the rising revolutionary struggle of the peoples of the Philippines and to force the NDFP, CPP and the New Peoples Army leading this protracted revolutionary struggle to submission.

This is a futile attempt to force the revolutionary movement of the peoples of the Philippines to abandon its just struggle for national and social liberation and submit itself to the will of the reactionary, bankrupt, corrupt and murderous regime in power in the Philippines. The regime of Mrs. Arroyo is a terrorist regime that has sponsored hooded gunmen to assassinate over 1000 progressives and people’s activists since it coming to power.

But they should know that not only Joma Sison’s arrest will not break the will of the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces but will intensify their resolve in bringing a rapid end to this crisis ridden puppet regime. The heroic struggle of the people of the Philippines has stood fast for decades and has outlived and in fact overthrown many of Mrs Arroyo’s predecessors, including the Marcos regime.

Joma Sison is being hounded for his staunch defence of the peoples struggle against imperialism and all reactionaries. He is hounded for his unyielding internationalism and belief that it is the masses that are the makers of history and that they will rise to liberate themselves establishing a society without war, injustice and exploitation - a society without imperialism and reaction. Hence an attack on Joma is an attack against the peoples everywhere from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The ILPS condemns and abhors the blatant abuse of power by the Dutch authorities in this latest episode of the long-standing systematic intimidation, ill treatment and denial of basic human rights of Professor Jose Maria Sisson.

The ILPS condemns the collaboration and collusion of the Dutch government with the Arroyo’s criminal regime and demand immediate and unconditional release of Prof. Sison and full restoration of his rights.

The ILPS general secretariat calls on all democratic and anti-imperialist forces, anti-war organisations and fronts and in particular requests all ILPS member organisations to continue to rally to the support of the ILPS chairman, Professor Jose Maria Sison, to actively join the international campaign to secure his freedom and demand his immediate and unconditional release from custody.

In The Hague, the ILPS members will be joining protest actions in front of the court on Friday 31^st August at 1.00 pm. We further call for immediate coordinated protest actions in front of Dutch embassies across the world.

Please send reports of actions and your statements to ILPS Information Bureau and distribution lists for wider distribution. Further information and updates will be issued through the ILPS Info Bureau distribution lists (info-bureau@lists.ilps-news.com).

ILPS General Secretariat

30/08/07

Info@ilps2001.com

ilp515@runbox.com

Statement in Word format

Reply to Alexander R. Magno: Jose Maria Sison's

 academic and literary record
By Tonyo
http://tonyo.blogspot.com
 

Sison's works are included in the following anthologies: Luis H. Francia's Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature in English and Voices of Conscience: Poetry from Oppression by Hume Cronyn.

Sison's latest book is Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World--Portrait of a Revolutionary, which he co-authored with Ninotchka Rosca.
 

Literary Awards for Sison

The prestigious Manila Critics Circle awarded Sison in 1984 with the National Book Award for Poetry for the book Prison and Beyond: Selected Poems. The following year, Sison was bestowed a Literary Achievement Award by the Writers Union of the Philippines.

In 1986, Sison was awarded the South East Asia WRITE Award by the Crown Prince of Thailand for his poetry and essays. He was the eighth Filipino to receive the award after Jolico Cuadra, Nick Joaquin, Gregorio Brillantes, Adrian Cristobal, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Virginia Moreno and Ricaredo Demetillo. After Sison, the awardees included Bienvenido N. Santos, Rio Alma, Lina Espina Moore, and more.

In 1998, the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, an institution founded in 1931, awarded Sison its highest citation, the Gawad Marcelo H. del Pilar for his poetry, writings and activism.

Sison and writers' organizations

Sison was president of the UP Journalism Club in 1958-1959 and a member of the UP Writers Club in 1962.

He was founder and chairman the Student Cultural Association in UP (SCAUP) in 1959-1962.

He also became a member of the following:

• National Press Club, 1965-68

• Afro-Asian Journalists' Association, 1966

• Afro-Asian Writers' Bureau , 1966

• Wereldschrijvers Werkgroep, Netherlands, 1993

• Vereniging van Letterkundigen-Vakbond van Schrijvers (Association of Literary Arts - Union of Writers), Netherlands, 1994

A people's professor

Having established Sison's legit claim to being a professor, poet and writer, it is important to stress his role as a writer in recent Philippine history.

Professor Sison is accused by the military of being Amado Guerrero, author of the Philippine Society and Revolution, the "bible" of Filipino national-democratic activists which ended the dominance and monopoly of functionalist-structuralist analyses on Philippine history and current affairs. Commonly known as PSR, this book continues to draw adherents.

Prior to the publication of PSR, Sison went on a speaking tour as professor and as an activist leader. His speeches and talks were later collected and published as Struggle for National Democracy (SND), a required read for activists and encapsulized Marxist, conflict analyses on history, politics, culture, military affairs, and standard issues of the day.

These two books helped transform Sison's cause of "national democracy" from idea to concrete action. These books produced a national democratic movement that by the time Marcos proclaimed martial law was prepared to wage armed resistance to the dictatorship, welcomed the best and brightest of that generation to its ranks, and offered the Filipino people a hope beyond what is offered by the rotten system Magno helps maintain and prettify.

Lastly, Magno's column illustrates the two diverse ways an intellectual paths an intellectual may take. One is Magno's way which is to be a sellout, and Sison's way, which is to serve the people despite the depredations and the villification by the likes of Arroyo and her pet Magno.

Photo shows Prof. Sison delivering a lecture at the UP Asian Center in 1986, courtesy of www.josemariasison.org

Presidential appointee Alexander R. Magno, currently a director of the Development Bank of the Philippines, today made the likes of President Arroyo, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, the top brass of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Dutch and US Embassies exceedingly happy with his latest column piece at the Philippine Star.

Why happy, because the column piece help reinforce the cruel characterizations of Sison. For Magno and his ilk, Sison does not deserve anything, not even the titles, awards, and distinctions he has long earned. From the choice of words Magno used, Sison seems to be undeserving of being called a human.

Is Magno continuing to write in favor of Arroyo ang rabidly against Sison in exchange for the DBP directorship? I do not know. What is apparent is that Magno's ideas pose serious dangers to Sison. He seems to agitate deaths squads to finally kill Sison, or for the Dutch government to jail him. But like the Dutch and the death squads, Magno cannot hide from the truth. He can go and hide in his cool office, sit down in his swivel chair and type similar column pieces of pure hate and cruelty, but truth is not on his side.

In the interest of fairness, let us look at Sison's claims of being a writer and professor.

 

Professor Sison's academic record

Of course, Professor Sison did not bestow the title on himself, as Magno pathetically claims.

After graduating cum laude with a BA in English Literature in 1959 from the University of the Philippines, Sison started teaching as a Teaching Fellow, also at UP. He also immediately began to take up Master of Arts in Comparative Literature at UP from 1959-1961.

Sison later received the Jajasan Siswa Lokantara scholarship in Indonesian language which sent him to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1962.

Sison was first called "Professor" in 1964 when he began a three-year stint as professorial lecturer in English, Political Science and Social Science at the Lyceum of the Philippines. 1964 was also the year Sison founded the Kabataang Makabayan, then the most militant organization of young Filipinos.

Upon his release from prison in 1986, Professor Sison returned to the academe and was appointed as Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the UP Asian Center .

Professor Sison was on a global lecture and speaking tour when the Philippine government cancelled his passport in 1987, forcing him to seek political asylum in Holland.

 

Sison as writer and poet

Everyone has favorites and it is quite clear that Magno does not count Sison as one of them. Magno also heaps scorn and doubts on Sison as a writer and poet endlessly as if he was sure 100 percent about what he was writing.

Let the records speak for itself about Sison's writing and poetry:

Sison's first book of poetry, Brothers, published in 1962 established him as a nationally-recognized poet. On scholarship in 1962, Sison learned Bahasa Indonesia and translated the works of Indonesian poet laureat Chairil Anwar.
 

His second book of poetry, Prison and Beyond: Selected Poems , was published in 1984.

In 1993, Dutch translations of his selected poems were published in a book entitled Gedichten.

His poems and essays have been published in international periodicals and anthologies.
 

National Artist Prof. Bienvenido Lumbera

on Joma's poems (complete article is in the book,

Prison and Beyond)  ►►

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