Jose Maria Sison, who launched one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies, has died at 83, the Communist Party of the Philippines announced yesterday.
The former university professor died in the Netherlands, where he had lived in self-imposed exile since the collapse of peace talks in 1987, when the rebellion that has claimed tens of thousands of lives was at its peak.
“Sison ... passed away at around 8:40pm after two weeks’ confinement in a hospital in Utrecht,” the party said in a statement, without specifying the cause of death. “The Filipino proletariat and toiling people grieve the death of their teacher and guiding light.”
Photo: Reuters
Sison was the founder of the country’s Communist Party, whose military wing — the New People’s Army (NPA) — has been waging an armed rebellion in one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies. The conflict between the NPA and the Philippine government has killed more than 40,000 people.
Sison had hoped to overthrow the government and establish a Maoist-style communist regime that would end “US imperialism” in the former US colony.
The ongoing armed struggle, launched in 1969, grew out of the global communist movement, finding fertile soil in the Philippines’ stark rich-poor divide.
The rebellion also benefited from the 1972-1986 rule of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, during which the legislature was shuttered, the free press muzzled and thousands of opponents tortured or killed. At its peak in the 1980s, the group boasted about 26,000 fighters, a number the military says has dwindled to a few thousand.
Since 1986, successive Philippine administrations have held peace talks with the communists through their Netherlands-based political arm, the National Democratic Front.
As the rebellion weakened, party leaders sought to enter a coalition government with former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte had prioritized ending the conflict when he took office in 2016, but he abandoned peace efforts, infuriated by repeated rebel attacks during the talks.
He declared the group a terrorist organization and accused them of killing police and soldiers while negotiations were under way.
“Even as we mourn, we vow [to] continue to give all our strength and determination to carry the revolution forward guided by the memory and teachings of the people’s beloved Ka Joma,” the NPA said.
Sison was also known as Joma. “Ka” means comrade.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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