Full Text of Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison
By Delfin T. Mallari of Philippine Daily Inquirer
January 12, 2018
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/959795/communists-wont-contest-terrorist-tag-in-court

MALLARI: Will the CPP-NPA challenge the terrorist tag in court?

SISON: As revolutionary forces, the CPP, NPA and the toiling masses of workers and peasants build their own revolutionary democratic government (organs of political power) against the reactionary government of big compradors, landlords and corrupt burreaucrats represented by Duterte. On this principled basis, the CPP and NPA cannot and will not enter the court of the reactionary government to participate in proceedings.

The single malicious objective of Duterte in terminating the GRP peace negotiations with the NDFP, in slandering the CPP and NPA as ¨terrorist¨, in extending martial law, in forming the Con-Ass, in railroading the pseudo-federal constitution and in concentrating powers in his hands through cha-cha is to fortify his fascist dictatorship and impose it on the people, at any cost. Duterte is hell-bent on killing revolutionaries, dissenters, legal oppositionists and ordinary people and overspending public money for corruption-laden infrastructure projects and for the military, police and intelligence agencies. Duterte is acting conspicuously like Marcos the fascist dictator. And he is practically inciting the people to revolt against his tyrannical and corrupt regime.

MALLARI: If the court would eventually declare the CPP-NPA as terrorist groups, how would this tag affect the status of the CPP-NPA as legitimate revolutionary forces?

SISON: The revolutionary status of the CPP, NPA and the mass movement is due to its adherence to the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory and practice of the working class as the leading class of the revolution, the sovereignty of the Filipino people, the basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry and the general line of people´s democratic revolution through protracted people´s war and the expansion and consolidation of the CPP, NPA, the mass organizations, the people´s democratic government (organs of political power), the various types of alliances and such types of territories as the guerrilla fronts, guerrilla bases, guerrilla zones and the revolutionary underground in enemy territory or white areas.

MALLARI: Will the CPP-NPA operations be affected financially because the state wiill prosecute anyone giving funds to you?

SISON: The CPP, NPA and the people´s democratic government have plenty of experience even under the harshest condition of martial law (such as during the time of Marcos) in dealing with the owners, managers and representatives of enterprises that must pay taxes and fines to the people´s democratic government. I presume that they know how to assure viability and profitability for socially and environmentally permissible enterprises and how to shut down enterprises that are impermissible or hostile to the revolutionary cause.

I have no personal and direct knowledge of how revolutionary taxes are collected from any enterprise. But it is a matter of public knowledge that the people´s democratic government always charges fair and affordable taxes (very small in comparison to what the reactionary government and corrupt officials collect) and that the taxes paid serve to maintain and expand public administration, mass education, land reform, production, health programs, cultural activities, defense and the people´s assemblies and people´s court system.

MALLARI: What will be the effect of the terrorist tag to someone like you who is abroad?

SISON: Proclamation 374 does not adversely affect me in any way, whether and whenever will a regional trial court do the bidding of Duterte to proscribe the CPP and NPA as ¨terrrorist¨. I am protected by my own lawful conduct while I am in The Netherlands and therefore I am well protected by Dutch law and interrnational law, including the Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. It is Duterte who has run afoul of Philippine, Dutch and international law by having publicly threatened to kill me a number of times.

I am supported by my relatives and friends who are abroad. I do not receive a single peso or the equivalent thereof from any entity in the Philippines for my subsistence.###