Legal victory for Jose-Maria Sison

October 12, 2009. A World to Win News Service. Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), won an important legal victory when the European Court of First Instance ruled that the European Union (EU) must remove his name from its so-called terrorist list.

He was placed on this list in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., the former colonial owner and still overseer of the Philippines, and at the instigation of Holland, where he has lived in exile for two decades. Last year the Dutch courts rebuffed repeated attempts by the country's prosecution office to bring him to trial for murder in connection with the armed struggle led by the CPP-led New People's Army in the Philippines, and earlier this year the case was dropped, but the Dutch government and the EU Council have not ceased their attempts to persecute him.

This EU court ruling will bring a restoration of Sison's rights to travel, work or receive a pension, use a bank account, receive housing and health benefits, and apply for asylum. He can sue the state for the moral and other damages suffered because of the blacklisting.

He announced in an October 1 press statement that this decision would allow him "to act freely and fruitfully as the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and not be persecuted and placed under duress." Those negotiations have been suspended.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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