Dutch Embassy in Ottawa:

demonstrators demand Prof. Jose Maria Sison's release

Ottawa, Canada, September 7, 2007 – Overseas Filipinos and supporters picketed in front of the Embassy of the Netherlands here today to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Prof. Jose Maria Sison, a political refugee who was arrested by Dutch police on August 28, 2007. The demonstrators also protested raids on the homes of other progressive Filipino migrants and refugees in the Netherlands.
 
Prof. Sison, one of the best known and most vocal opponents of the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her backers in Washington, was arrested for allegedly ordering the killings of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara in the Philippines, the homeland he has not visited in 20 years.
 
“Prof. Sison is a strong anti-imperialist freedom fighter, not a criminal,” said Joe Calugay, coordinator of the Ontario Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (Ottawa). “His only crime it to have fought side-by-side with the Philippine people for justice, liberation from foreign domination and fundamental political and social change to benefit the overwhelming majority of the people in his homeland.”
 
“We are very concerned that he is being kept in isolation in the Scheveningen Penitential Facility, the very prison used by the Nazis to hold and torture Dutch resistance fighters during WWII,” Calugay told the demonstrators. The last time he was imprisoned like this was during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Here he is again deprived of his basic rights as a prisoner in what we thought was a civilized and humane society.”
 
Domestic helpers and other migrant workers at the picket said they felt a strong connection to Prof. Sison because, like them, he was forced to live thousands of miles from his beloved homeland. They said they admired his efforts to change the social and political situation in the Philippines so that millions of Filipinos would no longer be obliged to seek temporary, often unprotected and poorly paid employment in hundreds of countries around the globe.
 
“We can only wonder if increasing Dutch investments in the Philippines is the real motive behind Prof. Sison’s arrest,” said Malcolm Guy, coordinator for the Centre for Philippine Concerns in Montreal. “The Dutch-owned Premier Old was recently granted rights to drill for oil in Ragay Gulf area of the Philippines. Holland is one of the major investors in the Philippines, with 150 Dutch companies including Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever siphoning huge profits from the country.”
 
Anna Rijk, Public Diplomacy Officer at the Embassy, met with the picketers who asked her to take their demands to Ambassador Karel P.M. de Beer and request the immediate release of Prof. Jose Maria Sison. “We Filipinos in Canada and elsewhere will never rest until you free this courageous and principled man,” one demonstrator told her.
 
Ms. Rijk claimed that the murder case is now in the hands of the Dutch judicial system, so there was little the Embassy could do. “We all know that the Dutch police would never have arrested a world renowned political refugee like Prof. Sison without a green light from top authorities in the Dutch government. This is a political case disguised as a criminal case, so therefore we do not accept that your hands are tied and ask that the Embassy transmit our demand for Prof. Sison’s release.” Malcolm Guy replied.
 
An ongoing fax and e-mail barrage based on the following letter has been organized across Canada over the last two weeks calling on the Dutch government to release Prof. Sison. Please add your voice to the protest :

His Excellency KAREL P.M. DE BEER
Ambassador
Royal Netherlands Embassy
Constitution Square Building
350 Albert Street, suite 2020
Ottawa, ON  K1R 1A4

e-mail: ott-cdp@netherlandsembassy.ca
fax: +1613 237-6471
phone: +1613 237-5030

Dear Ambassador,

I, ____________________, would like to register my strong condemnation for the arrest of Professor Jose Maria Sison, 68, by Dutch Police on what I believe are trumped up charges of “incitement to murders”.

I hereby demand that the Royal Netherlands government order the immediate and unconditional release of Prof. Jose Maria Sison. I also register my total disapproval of the raids on the homes of other progressive Filipino migrants and refugees in the Netherlands.

As you know, Professor Sison has been a political refugee in the Netherlands for nearly 20 years under the Refugee Convention and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Sison was arrested August 28, 2007 for the murders of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara -- in the Philippines, although he has not set foot in that country for 20 years.

I maintain that the real reasons for Professor Sison's arrest are political... not criminal. Prof. Jose Maria Sison has been a leading figure of the Philippine national democratic revolution for almost forty years. He is one of the pioneers who revived the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines in the early 1960s and he re-established the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). For nine years, he was the most prominent political prisoner of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Sison admits having been the founder and first chairman of the CPP, from its re-establishment in 1968 until his capture by the Marcos regime in 1977, but today he clearly states he is only the chief political consultant of the NDF and is not in the leadership of the New People’s Army or the CPP.

The Philippine government has been plotting to try to silence Professor Sison for many years. They now seem to have worked out a deal with your government to criminalize and gag one of the most influential and vocal critics of the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

They want Professor Sison out of the way because, as the Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), he embodies the aspirations of the Filipino people in the over 30-year old struggle they are waging for the country's national and social liberation. He personifies the spirit of true and genuine international solidarity necessary to bring about a just and lasting peace. And he has been at the forefront of the campaign to put an end to the 850 extrajudicial politically-motivated killings and 200 forced disappearances that have been perpetrated with impunity during the government of President Arroyo. (See recent report by Professor Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.)
 

I find the timing of this arrest particularly suspicious since earlier this year the European Court of First Instance annulled the Council of the European Union (EU) decision blacklisting Prof. Sison as a "terrorist".

I concur with Supreme Bishop Millamena of the Philippine Independent Church, who said in a recent interview: "Prof. Sison is not a terrorist. All he does is to fight with the poor for a life in dignity. That is a legitimate struggle”. Former Philippine Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Jr. has also said that “one needs to make a distinction between a rebel who is fighting because of hunger and perceived injustice, and a terrorist who seeks to sow terror and hatred”.►►►►

I reiterate my call to the Dutch government and police to immediately and unconditionally release and drop all charges against Professor Jose Maria Sison.

Yours sincerely,
Signed by
Signed in (city)
Date
 
-- 30 --
____________________________________________________

Centre d'appui aux Philippines / Centre for Philippine Concerns
25 ans de solidarité / 25 years of solidarity
Montréal, Québec, Canada
mailtto:capcpc@web.ca
http://cap-cpc.blogspot.com/

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NDFP INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION OFFICE
Press Release
10 September 2007

NDFP denounces Arroyo regime’s amnesty offer;

An obvious attempt to justify Prof. Sison’s deportation from the Netherlands

The NDFP denounces the Arroyo regime’s recently declared amnesty proclamation as an obvious attempt to justify a request for deportation of Prof. Jose Maria Sison, the Chief Political Consultant of the NDFP Negotiating Panel, from the Netherlands to the Philippines .

Chairperson Luis Jalandoni of the NDFP Negotiating Panel said that, like previous amnesty proclamations, Mrs. Arroyo’s version will suffer the same fate as the others, falling flat on its face as “just another money-making scheme for corruption, not only by her and her minions in the cabinet oversight committee for internal security but also by her chosen military and local officials. Alleged surrenderees will be manufactured, provided with broken down weapons, and paid measly sums for the weapons and livelihood programs. Huge amounts will be pocketed by these officials.”

 

“But there is a more sinister aspect to Mrs. Arroyo’s proclamation,” Jalandoni added. “It is an obvious attempt to justify a request by the regime to have Prof. Sison deported to the Philippines . Jesus Dureza, head of the GRP’s office of the presidential assistant for the peace process, has already let the cat out of the bag with his statement that Prof. Sison is also covered by the so-called amnesty proclamation.” Prof. Sison is currently in detention in The Netherlands on trumped-up charges of alleged murder.
 

Prof. Sison was arrested in The Netherlands last 28 August 2007 for allegedly ordering the deaths of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara from Dutch soil, based on evidence that the GRP Supreme Court declared last 1 June 2007 as of no value against Prof. Sison and 50 others, even admonishing justice secretary Raul Gonzalez and his prosecutors for undertaking politically-motivated investigations and for prostituting the justice system. Moreover, there are no charges in any GRP court for the alleged murders that Prof. Sison is being accused of. And even if there were, these alleged crimes are subsumed under the political offense of rebellion over which Dutch judicial authorities have no jurisdiction.

Jalandoni said that there is growing international condemnation of the Dutch government for the arrest of Prof. Sison and the raids on the NDFP office and the houses of Filipino progressives. He further said that the continuing political persecution of Prof. Sison will eventually prove costly for the Arroyo regime.

Canadian Committee to Free Jose Ma. Sison

Press Release

For immediate release
Monday, September 10, 2007
 

Canadian organizations form
Committee to Free Jose Maria Sison

 

OTTAWA – Filipino migrant organizations and solidarity groups across Canada have joined together to form a country-wide committee to defend the rights of Filipino anti-imperialist leader Prof. Jose Maria (Joma) Sison, arrested by Dutch police on August 28, 2007.

Prof. Sison is a political refugee who has been living in exile for 20 years in Utrecht, Netherlands.  As the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), Prof. Sison has been instrumental in pursuing peace talks between the Philippine government and the Philippine revolutionary organization. Sison was a political prisoner under former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The formation of the Free Joma Sison Committee is a culmination of a commitment to continue actions protesting the unjust arrest and detention of Prof. Sison. The convening groups have been collaborating on actions including protest letters, fax barrages and rallies in Canadian cities. Their latest activity was a rally in front of the Embassy of the Netherland on September 7, in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where a group of protesters surrounded an Embassy spokesperson to press their demand to immediately release Prof. Sison and drop the trumped-up charges.

On the day of Sison's arrest, the Dutch police, in Gestapo-like fashion, also raided the homes and seized the property of seven other NDFP personnel, making the arrest and investigation clearly politically motivated as the entire NDFP Peace Panel based in the Netherlands are also being subjected to harassment and repression.

Dutch prosecutors allege that Prof. Sison ordered the killings in the Philippines of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara. However, the Philippine Supreme Court recently dismissed these charges against Sison and other progressive individuals in the Philippines. The court ruled that evidence used in the rebellion case can no longer be used in other legal proceedings against Sison.

“The attacks on Sison and the NDFP are part of the continuing political repression carried out by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her backers at the White House,” says Malcolm Guy, coordinator for the Montreal-based Centre for Philippine Concerns (CAP-CPC), one of the convening groups of the Free Joma Sison Committee.

“Prof. Sison has been an outspoken critic of the Arroyo government and its policy of extrajudicial killings under the guise of the 'war on terror'. The Netherlands has huge oil interests in the Philippines and is the second largest foreign investor in that country. With Sison's arrest, the Dutch government is clearly colluding in a political repression campaign orchestrated from Washington and Manila.”

Guy concluded: “The arrest of Prof. Sison is an attack on basic human rights and civil liberties and demands the widest possible response. We call upon all freedom and justice-loving people and organizations to join The Free Joma Sison Committee to call for the immediate release and unconditional dropping of all charges against Prof. Jose Maria Sison by the Dutch authorities.”

Free Joma Sison committees have also been set up in the U.S.A., Europe and Asia as part of a global response to the launching of the Free Joma Sison Campaign, initiated by the International Committee Defend, International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), and the Dutch Friends of the Filipino People on September 7, 2007.

In Canada, besides the CAP-CPC, the following organizations from Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg are the convenors of the Committee: PINAY (Quebec Filipino migrant women’s organization), Ontario Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (Ottawa), Philippine Network for Justice and Peace (Toronto), Migrante Toronto (an alliance which includes Damayan Migrant Education and Resource Center, Filipino Worker’s Support Committee -Toronto, Sulong Itaguyod ang Karapatan ng Migranteng Pilipino sa Labas ng Bansa - Ontario, Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada - Toronto, and United Filipinos for Nationalism and Democracy), and Centre for Philippine Concerns - Winnipeg. Organizations interested in becoming members are requested to contact the Centre for Philippine Concerns at capcpc@web.ca.

“The convening organizations have worked together in the past and have two things in common: They are anti-imperialists and they support the Filipino people’s struggle for national sovereignty and true democracy,” says Marco Luciano, spokesperson for  Migrante International - Toronto. “We see a direct connection

 between the campaign to free Joma Sison, our efforts to defend the rights and welfare of migrant workers here in Canada, and the struggle of the Philippine people for a truly independent, just and peaceful country.”-30-

CPC - Montreal, OCHRP - Ottawa and PNJP - Toronto convene a 1 day consultation in Ottawa to discuss and share their work around Philippine solidarity 

CPC in coordination with OCHRP and other groups hold picket in front of Dutch emabassy

For more information:

Malcolm Guy
Centre for Philipine Concerns (CAP-CPC)
capcpc@web.ca
blog: http://cap-cpc.blogspot.com

Statement in Word format

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