Joma Sison snubs Duterte’s renewed call for ceasefire

LUCENA CITY – Top communist rebel Jose Maria “Joma” Sison snubbed the government’s renewed call for a ceasefire with New People’s Army (NPA) rebels to flatten the curve of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and instead slammed the government ceasefire as lies.

“The government unilateral ceasefire is not true. The military and police operations continue in different areas,” Sison, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder, said in an online interview from his base in Utrecht in The Netherlands Friday afternoon.

Sison claimed that the deployment of government forces in Luzon supposedly to help in the implementation of enhanced community quarantine was also another deceit.

“That redeployment in urban areas, especially in Luzon, that’s not to fight COVID-19 but to stop public transport, a nuisance and damage to the livelihood of the people and blocking of medical testing and treatment of those sick with COVID-19 or whatever ailment,” Sison said.

The President on Wednesday declared a ceasefire, ordering all government forces to cease their operations against communist rebels from March 19 to April 15.

Sison described the ceasefire declaration as “premature, if not insincere and false, and just a psywar trick.”

He added that the military and police “continue to Red-tag, abduct, and murder social activists, including human rights defenders.”

Edited by LZB