LUCENA CITY – A Utrecht-based official of the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) on Friday called National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales “ignorant” for seeking the expulsion of Jose Maria Sison from the Netherlands to force his return to the Philippines.
“This (Gonzales) notorious violator of human rights now talks nonsense about ‘going after’ Prof. Sison and asking the Dutch government to ‘expel’ him,” Luis Jalandoni, NDFP peace panel chief, said in an email statement to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Friday morning.
Jalandoni said the government top security official is “ignorant” of the decisions of the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, the Raad van State, in 1992 and 1995.
Jalandoni claimed that the Raad van State in its decision had declared Sison as a “recognized political refugee” under Article 1 A of the Refugee Convention and is covered by the absolute protection of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
“This Article forbids his (Sison) being returned to the Philippines, because this article stipulates that he may not be subjected to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment,” Jalandoni explained.
He noted that the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Amnesty International had also testified in Sison’s favor before the Raad van State.
Upset over the decision of Dutch prosecutors on Tuesday to finally drop criminal charges against Sison for lack of evidence to pin him down for the death of two of his erstwhile comrades in the Philippines, Gonzales said the government would press the Netherlands to expel the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines and send him back to his home country to face trial.
In a statement issued Thursday, Gonzales said: “We will look into our laws and their (Dutch) laws to find ways to have Sison expelled from the Netherlands and back to the country.
He vowed to “really go after” Sison.
“Sison may be free now from the suit against him in Dutch courts but not from the arm of our own justice system,” Gonzales had said.
Sison has been living in the Dutch town of Utrecht in self-imposed exile since 1987.
Jalandoni said he was not surprised that Gonzales was upset by the “failure of their scheme”.
“He after all was tasked by the fake president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to look after this case against Prof. Sison,” he said.
“As head of the Inter-agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), the agency tasked to trump up charges against the legal opposition and leaders and members of progressive organizations, and to cover up the criminal acts of military and police personnel responsible for extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, his efforts since January 2006, a period of three years and three months, have all been in vain,” said the NDFP official.
The NDFP congratulated Sison and his Dutch and Filipino lawyers for their legal victory with the dismissal of the criminal charges.
“For more than nineteen months, from August 28, 2007 until March 31, 2009, the Dutch prosecutors, with the collusion of the Arroyo regime and the US, tried in vain to pin down Prof. Sison with the false charge of involvement in the killing of two military assets of the regime,” Jalandoni said.
Jalandoni said that prior to the arrest of Sison in August 2007, the Dutch prosecutors with the collaboration of the Arroyo regime, especially General Eduardo Ermita and Gonzales, heard testimonies in the US embassy, the Dutch embassy and former US air base in Clark Field in the Philippines, as well as testimonies in The Netherlands, seeking to make the false charge against Sison stick.
“But to no avail. Prof. Sison and his lead lawyer Michiel Pestman, supported by Filipino lawyers led by Atty. Romeo T. Capulong, put up a strong defense,” he added.
On Tuesday, the Public Prosecution Service of the Dutch government called off its investigation against Sison on charges of ordering the deaths of his former comrades in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara.
Kintanar, a former leader of the NPA, was murdered on Jan. 23, 2003, and Tabara, another top NPA official, was assassinated along with his son-in-law Stephen Ong on Sept. 26, 2004
The CPP, through its official publication, claimed responsibility for both killings.
In 1992, Kintanar and Tabara broke away from the mainstream CPP which the military claimed was still headed by Sison due to differences over whether to pursue the Maoist revolutionary strategy as the blueprint of communist insurgents to topple the government and seize power.
With the dismissal of the charges against him, Sison said he will focus his attention on the stalled peace negotiations between the government and the NDFP in his capacity as its chief political consultant.
