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| Southeast Asia |
| NPA Leader Denies Terrorism |
| 2002-08-17 |
| Jose Maria Sison portrays himself as an unemployed professor, a Filipino refugee living on welfare and a political consultant who leads a contemplative life of reading and writing in this medieval Dutch university town. He sounds like a member of the liesure class, doesn't he? Wish I didn't have to work... Intelligence agencies around the world have a different picture of the bespectacled, 63-year-old revolutionary. The Dutch security service says Sison has been directing the New People's Army in the Philippines for more than a decade, in one of the longest-running and most violent communist rebellions. "The Devil finds works for idle hands..." This month, the United States added his name to its list of international terrorist suspects. The move refocused the attention of Dutch authorities on Sison, who has lived here since the 1980s. In 1968, Sison founded the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military wing, the 12,000-strong New People's Army, which has conducted a 34-year insurgency. So he's a professional revolutionary, just like Lenin was... But his role in anti-government activities is unclear since he fled into exile in the Netherlands in 1986 after spending nine years in prison in his own country. The Philippines' military claims he regained leadership of the clandestine Communist Party within a few years of leaving his homeland. For years he has led rebel delegations in on-and-off negotiations with the government, calling himself the chief political adviser. Now Sison says he's no longer even a party member and can speak only as an insightful onlooker about Washington's demand for a crackdown on the party and the rebels. Why? Is he afraid they're gonna take away his welfare check? Or kick him out of the country? |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |