Sison denies legal orgs as Red fronts

LUCENA CITY – Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison assailed the government’s anti-communist witch hunt and denied that militant legal organizations were fronts of the Maoist-inspired insurgents.

“I have never identified or enumerated any legal organization as a ‘front’ or facade of the CPP,” Sison said in a statement from Utrecht in the Netherlands on Tuesday.

He added: “I have always referred with respect and accuracy to legal organizations adhering to the line of national independence and democracy as legal democratic formations independent of the CPP.”

Sison made the statement after media reports revealed that the Philippine National Police (PNP) has been monitoring and profiling members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) on suspicion of being members or sympathizers of the communist insurgents.

PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde confirmed the report but sacked several police intelligence officers not for the profiling of ACT members but for leaking the order and their “scary” method of intelligence gathering.

On Monday, ACT and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), both critics of President Duterte, have also been the subjects of news items that tagged the two organizations as fronts of the CPP-New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

Sison accused Albayalde of masterminding the black propaganda against ACT and NUJP.

Sison called Albayalde “a big liar.”

“He (Albayalde) is capitalizing on a distorted spy report on a 30-year old video of a speech of mine in Brussels in which I actually differentiated the legal democratic forces and the forces of the armed revolution,” Sison recalled.

Sison also accused President Duterte as the one allegedly responsible “for the current anti-communist witch hunt against teachers, lawyers, journalists, social activists, human rights advocates, the religious and other people.”

He said the Duterte administration and security officials resorted to harassment and intimidation of urban-based militant organization for their failure to crush the communist insurgents in the countrysides.

“They will find it more messy and scandalous to blacklist and murder members of the intelligentsia than the poor slum dwellers, peasants, and indigenous people,” Sison said.