Written Observations by the NDFP Negotiating Panel and
Others on the Report for the Hearing on 30 May 2006 (reg no 296045)
drafted by the Judge-Rapporteur, in Case T-47-03 Jose Maria Sison
against Council of the European Union
Interveners:: Kingdom of the Netherlands, United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Negotiating Panel of the
National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
On no. 231 of the Report, the NDFP Negotiating
Panel and Others assert that the Council has wrongly cited the
Rechtbank (REK ruling of 11 September 1997) as the judicial authority
declaring Prof. Jose Maria Sison as a terrorist. The Rechtbank
explicitly stated in no. 9 of its decision on 11 September 1997
that it must be recognized as established in law that Article
1F of the Refugee Convention cannot be used against Prof. Sison
and that he has a well-grounded fear for persecution in the meaning
of Article 1A of the Refugee Convention.
In its observations, the Council makes the unfounded and unproven
allegation that Prof. Sison is associated with terrorism. Then
it proceeds to gratuitously declare that the assertions of the
NDFP Negotiating Panel and Others, namely, that Prof. Sison acted
as Chief Political Consultant of the NDFP in the peace negotiations
with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines, the fact
that both the NDFP and the GRP had agreed to grant safety and
immunity guarantees to all participants in the GRP-NDFP peace
negotiations, the support of the Filipino people, as well as the
international community and the European Parliament and Prof.
Sison’s efforts in support of human rights, do not preclude
Prof. Sison’s “being associated with terrorism”.
It is important to note that the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) Report on the Philippines 2005 explicitly states: “In
fairness to the CPP-NPA’s historical record of armed struggle,
it has not, as a policy – and has not generally in practice
–engaged in terrorism or acts of terrorism by deliberately
targeting civilians. Unlike the Abu Sayyaf or the MILF, the CPP-NPA
has no Islamic connection that could possibly put it in the network
of Al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah. The CPP-NPA and, for that matter,
the MILF, through its antecedent the MNLF, have pre-dated Al-Qaeda-type
terrorism by several decades, having instead come from the tradition
of national liberation movements of the 1960s.
It is further worth noting that the UNDP also states that the
terrorist listing of Prof. Sison and the CPP-NPA has negatively
affected the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. This terrorist listing
by the EU on 28 October 2002 was preceded by the Dutch government’s
“terrorist” listing on 13 August 2002. In the official
country report on the Philippines made by the Dutch Foreign Ministry,
updated in August 2005, the Netherlands admits that it put Prof.
Sison, the CPP and NPA on its “terrorist” list on
the request of the United States.
The aforecited UNDP Report further states: “The US-led
campaign against terrorism reflects a drift to militarize the
response to terrorism, and a predominance of the military and
military solutions in addressing not only terrorism but also rebellion
and internal armed conflict. At another, more comprehensive or
encompassing level, it has reinforced as already dominant or hegemonic
ideology of national security, particularly its thrust of counterinsurgency
as the framework to address insurgency or rebellion. Even the
peace process has become subsumed under a national or internal
security framework. The peace negotiations in particular, through
the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP), have been
subject to the Cabinet Oversight Committee (COC) on Internal Security
created by Executive Order No. 21 with a counterinsurgency “Strategy
of Holistic Approach.”
“The Arroyo government’s objective for the peace
process is no longer so much addressing the root causes of rebellion
as it is demobilizing the rebel forces. And even before Arroyo,
there has been the persistent militarist mentality of degrading
the rebel’s military capability so as to be able to impose
a peace settlement on them. And now there is the temptation to
try to even finish them off with US anti-terrorism logistics support
which also funds the AFP’s modernization aspirations. More
than 35 years of armed conflict should have shown to both sides
the futility, illusion, and great cost of aspiring for a military
victory over the other side. (United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) Philippine Human Development Report 2005, pp. 93-94) [Note
by LJ: should we still include the last sentence? Or better omit
it?]
The Council does not make any valid response to the position
of the NDFP Negotiating Panel and Others that the unfounded and
unjust terrorist listing of Prof. Sison, the NDFP Negotiating
Panel’s Chief Political Consultant, and of the CPP and the
NPA, adversely affects the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, because
as the UNDP declares, the focus is diverted from addressing the
root causes of the armed conflict towards the surrender or demobilization
of the NPA or even to finish it off.
The gratuitous, unfounded observation of the Council that “it
is a typical fallacy of terrorist organizations to use concepts
of humanitarian law and of the law relating to armed conflicts”
is contradicted not only by the above-cited UNDP study but also
by the policies and practice of the CPP, the NPA and the statements
and actions for human rights and international humanitarian law
by Prof. Sison. Moreover, as earlier stated, the CPP, the NPA
and the NDFP made their Declaration of Undertaking to Apply the
Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I of 1977 on 5 July 1996
and the NDFP’s Declaration of Adherence to International
Humanitarian Law on 15 August 1991.
On no. 232 of the Report: The NDFP Negotiating
Panel and Others state on the misuse of power by the Council in
its unfounded and unjust “terrorist” listing of Prof.
Sison, the CPP and the NPA the following:
By the aforementioned “terrorist” listing, the Council
of the EU violates the principle of national sovereignty that
is enshrined in the GRP-NDFP Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 by
interfering in Philippine affairs and usurping jurisdiction over
the alleged acts of the CPP and NPA in the Philippines. Just like
the United States, the EU has no legitimate prerogative to violate
the national sovereignty of the Filipino people and the territorial
integrity of the Philippines by inofficiously usurping jurisdiction
over Philippine revolutionary entities and events. The Council,
in arbitrarily designating persons, groups or entities as “terrorists”
by summary decision, has acted illegitimately as a judicial superbody.
In accordance with its own penal code, the Philippine government
can charge Filipino revolutionaries for rebellion but not for
terrorism which is absent from said code.
Highly respected international human rights groups like Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of
Jurists and Statewatch, which monitor civil liberties in the EU,
reveal and declare that “terrorist” listings are “arbitrary,
secretive, and unjust” and “raise serious human rights
concerns” because they are “frequently drawn up on
a basis of secret intelligence, and that the normal judicial process
governing such serious accusations, and their prosecution, is
discarded.”
They point out that such lists make no allowance for groups and
individuals that are engaged in acts of resistance to occupation
or tyranny as a legitimate right to self-defense and determination
and warn that freedom fighters and their supporters are being
regarded as common criminals. Amnesty International shares the
view that these EU so-called counterterrorism initiatives, including
its “terrorist blacklists”, are compromising human
rights.
Particularly in the case of Prof. Sison, the EU listing is contrary
to the basic tenets of due process including the presumption of
innocence, the rights to defense, to a fair and public hearing,
to be informed promptly of the nature and cause of the accusation,
and to examine or have witnesses against him examined, among others.
The Council of the EU arbitrarily accuses him of the heinous crime
of terrorism, applies punitive sanctions on him.
Do these not constitute a strong substantiation of misuse of
power by the Council?
It is clear from the public declarations of the Arroyo government’s
then Foreign Secretary Blas Ople that the aim of the Arroyo government
in campaigning for
the “terrorist” listing of the CPP, the NPA and Prof.
Sison was to pressure the NDFP, the CPP and the NPA to sign a
so-called final peace agreement, which is a document of capitulation
or surrender. This was made clear by Mr. Ople during his tour
of various European governments in September 2002, prior to the
EU “terrorist” listing on 28 October 2002.
Therefore, it was known to the Council of the EU that it was
the declared intention of the Arroyo government to use the European
governments to make the false accusation of terrorism against
the CPP, NPA and Prof. Sison for a political purpose that has
nothing to do with either the application of law or the struggle
against terrorism. The Council of the EU was aware of said intention
when it made its “terrorist” listing of the NPA and
Prof. Sison on 28 October 2002. And it knew of that intention
when it put the CPP on its “terrorist” list on 17
October 2005.