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UTRECHT,
the Netherlands—Prof. Jose Ma. Sison says it is up to
the government if it wanted “to go into serious peace
negotiations” with the National Democratic Front (NDF)
to address the root causes of the 40-year-old communist
insurgency in the Philippines.
Sison, the NDF chief consultant, told
the BusinessMirror that the NDF and the Communist Party
of the Philippines (CPP), including its armed partisan,
the New People’s Army (NPA), is open to resuming
“informal exploratory peace talks” with the government
but with certain conditions.
“We are open [to] informal exploratory
talks before we resume . . . formal peace negotiations.
There were developments [which] the GRP did which
amounted to being obstacles to the resumption of peace
negotiations,” Sison said in an exclusive interview in
the NDF head office in the Netherlands.
Peace talks between the government and
the NDF have been put on hold since 2004. The Armed
Forces leadership recently said the communist rebels
remain the top threat to national security. It also
accused them of being behind most of the disappearances
and killings of militant activists as part of a new
internal purge. The disappearances and killings,
however, have been blamed by the victims’ relatives
mostly on government forces. These have been the subject
of exhaustive reports by a special Philippine government
panel, as well as the United Nations; and lately, of
petitions for the writ of amparo, after the Philippine
Supreme Court, in an unprecedented summit, adopted the
Latin American legal recourse for human-rights cases.
In the interview here, Sison explained
that the NDF did not withdraw from the negotiating table
because of his inclusion—along with the NPA—in the
terrorism blacklists of the United States and the
European Union, adding that they just asked for a
“postponement.”
They wanted “the Philippine government
to do something about our terrorist listing because they
were the ones who lobbied the US for our inclusion in
the list. The government was thinking that if the NDF is
on the terrorists list, we [would] have no choice but to
accept the three-page peace accord [that virtually
contained simply] a surrender of arms,” said Sison, who
has been living in the Netherlands since 1987.
Sison said in a statement earlier that
the cease-fire between the GRP and NDFP is possible
anytime if the government 1) agrees with the NDFP on the
10 principles in the proposed concise agreement for an
immediate just peace, 2) respects the political
authority and territory of the “people’s democratic
government,” 3) withdraws AFP troops to divisional
headquarters and the PNP mobile brigades to brigade
headquarters and dissolves the paramilitary forces, 4)
removes the 12 impediments that prevent the resumption
of formal talks and 5) agrees with the NDFP to
accelerate the peace negotiations in accordance with The
Hague Joint Declaration.
“So if the Arroyo administration is
willing, to talk to us we are willing too, even in a
discreet manner,” Sison reiterated.
But Sison lambasted the Arroyo
administration’s “tactics” of resorting to localized
peace negotiations, amnesty rehabilitation and
cease-fire.
“The government’s tactic now through
this localized peace talks [is] intended to fragment the
revolutionary movement and the scheme of amnesty and
rehabilitation is a worn-out trick of the military,” he
said.
According to Sison, the NDF negotiating
panel, through the Norwegian government, has long
informed the GRP of its readiness to engage in
exploratory talks.
“The choice is hers (President Arroyo)
whether to destroy the revolutionary movement this year
or seriously use the peace negotiation to find ways of
addressing the root causes of the armed conflict,” Sison
said. |
