CoRIM: “Release José María Sison!”

September3, 2007. A World to Win News Service. Following is an August 30 statement by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.

The Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement learned with anger and outrage of the arrest in The Netherlands of José María Sison by the Dutch authorities. Comrade Sison was the founding Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 and has remained a life-long opponent of imperialism and reaction and leader of the Filipino people’s struggles. It is for these reasons and no other that comrade Sison has been hounded by successive reactionary governments in the Philippines. U.S. imperialism and the European Union have also tried to stick the “terrorist” label on comrade Sison, despite the fact that the struggle he has been associated with in the Philippines is widely known, even by the reactionary news media, to have the support of millions of Filipinos from all walks of life.

The arrest of comrade Sison is not only a major blow to the struggle of the Filipino people, it is also an attack on the thousands of revolutionaries and other political activists from around the world who have settled in Europe because of severe political persecution in their home countries. If the Dutch authorities succeed in bringing comrade Sison to trial, it will have ominous, more widespread implications.

The CoRIM, on behalf of the entire Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, calls upon all communist, revolutionary and progressive forces and individuals to raise their voices in protest to demand that the Dutch authorities release José María Sison, drop all charges, and cease their political persecution of him.

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