NTF-ELCAC orchestrates legal offensive against Ka Joma, et al.

A series of filing of trumped-up charges against Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Founding Chairman and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Chief Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison has been mounted and directed by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) the past weeks. Other peasant and social activists have also been maliciously implicated in these cases.

Orchestrated by the NTF-ELCAC, self-declared ‘rebel’ returnees have lodged charges of child abuse, human trafficking and rape against Sison and other activists. Three separate batches have filed charges on August 23, September 1 and 3 on the Department of Justice thru the assisstance of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG).

Responding to the allegations, Ka Joma said in a statement: “Charges of terrorism and common crimes being made against me by the Duterte regime are patently false, puerile and futile and do not bother me a bit.” These trumped-up cases are not new to Ka Joma and his lawyers. To recall, the Arroyo regime, with Gen. Hermogenes Esperon as National Security Adviser, also prodded the Dutch government to file charges of multiple murder against Sison causing his arrest in August 2007. Sison won his case resulting in acquittal by the District Court of The Hague and by the Appellate Court of the Netherlands.

“But once more, Gen. Esperon is in the GRP as the top henchman of Duterte in his scheme of fascist dictatorship and campaign of state terrorism,” said Sison on yet another vain attempt to repeat these tactics.

Sison explained that he cannot be arrested nor extradited to the Philippines as he enjoys the absolute protection of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the principle of nonrefoulement in the Refugee Convention.

It was established before the Dutch courts and the European Court of Justice that from the time of his arrest and detention in November 1977 by the Marcos fascist regime, he ceased to be the Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPP and likewise ceased to be the operational leader of the CPP, the New People’s Army (NPA) or any other armed revolutionary organization in the Philippines.

“All these false charges against me are intended to distract public attention from the crimes of treason, mass murder and plunder committed by the Duterte regime,” Ka Joma said, “from the well-founded charges of crimes against humanity against Duterte before the International Criminal Court and from the glaring failure of the Duterte regime to destroy the armed revolution of the Filipino people.”

NTF-ELCAC orchestrates legal offensive against Ka Joma, et al.