LUCENA CITY — Exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison said he would donate a substantial portion of the compensation he received as martial law victim to lawyers who had helped him in the past.
In an online interview on Tuesday, Sison said he received P1.2 million “for my torture” and other violations of his rights by the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
“I will be donating a substantial part to a group of public interest lawyers who have helped me since a long time ago,” said Sison, Communist Party of the Philippines founder who had gone into exile in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
He did not say how much of the P1.2 million he would donate.
But he said he and his wife, Julie de Lima, who also received P1.2 million in compensation for Marcos victims, would “keep a certain amount as an emergency fund for medical and funeral expenses so that we shall not be a burden to the living.”
Separate list
Julie, according to Sison, has her own “list of people to share the windfall with.”
Sison was captured by government forces on Nov. 10, 1977.
During his detention, he was tortured and put in solitary confinement.
Sison and his wife, who was also detained and tortured, were released on March 5, 1986, after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.
The Human Rights Victims Claims Board had approved 11,103 of at least 75,730 compensation claims.
Compensation amounts ranged from P176,000 to P1.76 million. Funds were to be drawn from P10 billion of the Swiss bank deposits seized by the government from the Marcoses. —Delfin T. Mallari Jr.