Fortress Europe Circular Letter (FECL) No.
47, October 1996
by Nicholas Busch, Editor
SISON CASE:
RECOGNISED REFUGEE
THREATENED WITH DEPORTATION
The Dutch Ministry of Justice is stubbornly seeking to deport
a prominent Filipino communist leader, Jose Maria Sison, in spite
of his recognition by the Raad van State (Highest Court) as a
refugee under the Geneva Convention. It is widely believed that
the Dutch government is acting upon pressure from "friendly
governments" in Washington and Manila, and out of concern
for important Dutch economic interests in the Philippines.
Jose Maria Sison has long been a prominent figure in Filipino
politics. Born in 1939, he became a lecturer in political science
and literature at the University of the Philippines in the early
1960s and was a co-founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines
(CPP) in 1968. After an assassination attempt against him the
same year, he went underground. In 1977, he was arrested by the
Marcos Regime, and subjected to eight months of torture and serious
ill-treatment on the orders of General Fidel Ramos, now President
of the Philippines. After nine years of imprisonment, Sison was
set free following the overthrow of the Marcos regime in 1986
and was reinstated as a professor of political science. However,
in 1988, the Filipino government cancelled Sison’s passport
on false charges under the Anti-Subversion Law and offered a bounty
of 1 Million pesos on his head.
A bizarre asylum procedure
Fearing for his life, Mr Sison sought asylum in the Netherlands.
His first application was rejected in 1990 by the Justice Ministry.
In 1992, the Raad van State (the highest administrative court
of the Netherlands) annulled this decision, whereupon the Justice
Ministry simply made a second negative decision, based on new
motives. The Justice Ministry based its decision mainly on a dossier
of the Dutch Internal Secret Service, BVD, alleging Sison’s
involvement in terrorist activities in his home country. Sison
appealed again.
In its verdict of February 1995, the Raad van State, found
- that there was no sufficient proof for the accusation of terrorism
of the BVD;
- that Article 1 F of the Geneva Convention excluding refugee
status for persons guilty of particularly serious crimes was not
applicable in Mr Sison’s case;
- that Mr Sison must be recognised as a refugee according to
Article 1 A of the Convention; and
- that his forcible return to the Philippines would breach Article
3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits
the deportation of a person to a country where he is threatened
with torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice reiterated its rejection
of Mr Sison’s asylum application and ordered his expulsion
in July 1996.
Recognition does not imply admission
In doing so, the Ministry of Justice is making use of what many
regard as a loophole in the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees.
Although the Convention establishes the criteria making a person
eligible for refugee status, it does not establish an obligation
for a state to actually admit a recognised refugee to its territory.
In the Netherlands this question of admission is regulated in
Article 15 §2 of the foreigners law, according to which the
admission of a recognised refugee may be refused, if he can be
sent to a third country. A person may even be sent directly to
his country of origin if there are "serious reasons"
derivable from the "general interests" of the Netherlands.
However, according to Mr Sison’s lawyer, Robert van As,
this latter rule does not stand on its own, but must be invoked
in combination with the Geneva Convention’s Articles 1 F
(denial of refugee status for perpetrators of very serious crimes)
or 33.2 (exception to the principle of non-refoulement for refugees
whom there are "reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger
to the security of the [host] country).
Since the Raad van State has unequivocally established that none
of these two provisions applies to Mr Sison’s case, he cannot
be deported to the Philippines, but - although he is a recognised
refugee - he may be deported to a third country willing to admit
him.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said in July: "In
the first place, Sison himself must look for a country to go to.
Eventually, and only in the second place, would the Ministry of
Justice look for a country for him".
Supporters of Mr Sison now are concerned that the Dutch authorities
might order him detained "pending deportation", in order
to press him into finding another country of asylum.
Through his Dutch lawyer, Robert van As, Mr Sison has appealed
against the expulsion measure. Pending a final decision on his
appeal, he cannot be deported.
Most observers believe it is unlikely that a country willing
to admit Mr Sison can actually be found. Thus, even if his appeal
is dismissed, he is likely to remain in the Netherlands. But his
lawyer, Robert van As, points out that in this event Mr Sison
would find himself in a "semi-legal situation", without
the rights of a recognised refugee. "I know of no previous
case where a recognised refugee is only tolerated in the host
country", says Mr van As.
Roel Fernhout, professor of asylum law at the Catholic University
of Nijmegen, says that the Dutch judiciary will have to decide
on a matter of principle: "The question is whether you can
say: `We are not expelling Sison to the Philippines, but he has
to leave our country’".
Pressure from a "friendly government"?
The Dutch authorities’ handling of the Sison case is remarkable
and seems contradictory at first sight. On the one hand, they
have de facto tolerated the presence of Jose Maria Sison, his
wife, and his son on Dutch soil for eight years. In doing so,
they were fully aware of Sison’s role within the NDFP (National
Democratic Front of the Philippines), a coalition of leftist parties
and organisations representing approximately 10 per cent of the
Filipino population. Sison is the chief political consultant of
the NDFP in its long-standing peace negotiations with the Government
of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). The NDFP-GRP negotiation
panel has long been hosted by the Netherlands. The most recent
round of talks actually took place in June 1996.
Although the Filipino government has recently reiterated claims
that Mr Sison is responsible for a number of killings in the Philippines
in 1985, 1989, and 1991, there are at present no charges against
him. Mr Sison for his part has repeatedly pointed to the fact
that he was in prison in the Philippines in 1985, and was living
in the Netherlands in 1989 and 1991. He has firmly denied any
involvement in any of the killings.
According to Mr Sison, as early as 1989/99, "US diplomatic
sources" leaked information to the Dutch press suggesting
that the US Government had "advised" the Dutch Government
to deny him asylum. In 1991, a Dutch TV crew filmed a joint attempt
by the American CIA and the Dutch BVD to recruit another Filipino
asylum seeker in the Netherlands, Nathan Quimpo, for spying on
Sison and other Filipino opposition figures (see FECL No.2, p.4).
At that time, the Dutch Interior Ministry sought to justify the
operation with threats of terrorist attacks against Dutch and
American targets in the Netherlands, allegedly planned by the
"New People’s Army" (the armed wing of the CPP
and a member organisation of the NDFP), but never substantiated
these accusations.
At the court hearing preceding the first verdict of the Raad
van State in 1992, the representative of the Dutch Ministry of
Justice openly declared that a government friendly to both the
Dutch and the Filipino governments would be "displeased and
offended", if Sison were granted asylum in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the Dutch Secretary of State of Justice, Ms Schmitz,
is continuing to depict Mr Sison as a terrorist suspect. Defending
her decision to deport Mr Sison, she argued that the Netherlands
did not want to be a "host country for future terrorist activities".
Commenting on the accusation of the Dutch Ministry of Justice
that he had "contacts" with terrorist movements, Mr
Sison said: "I attend international conferences. There I
talk to people from other liberation movements, like the Kurds
or the ANC. Dutch ministers also do that. Are they also terrorists?"
Indeed, the Dutch government’s accusations against Sison
appear increasingly untenable, not to say absurd: The second verdict
of the Raad van State, has actually cleared Mr Sison from being
involved in terrorism. The charges against him in the Philippines
were dropped some years ago. Most recently, President Ramos spectacularly
invited Sison to come home, offering him a senatorship. Irrespective
of General Ramos’ true intentions, the offer stands in stark
contrast with the Dutch accusations of terrorism.
Mr Sison for his part has declined the invitation which he considers
a trap. Stressing that there is still a bounty on his head, he
says: "They will not murder me upon arrival in Manila, like
the opposition leader Aquino in 1983, but they will hit me somewhat
later".
Moreover, Mr Sison feels that leaving the Netherlands now would
amount to "running away" from the serious accusations
of the Dutch government.
Sources: International Campaign for Asylum
of the Sison Family, c/o P.O.Box 2041, NL-3800 Amersfort; Tel/Fax:
+31/33 4723084, E-mail: [email protected]; Our interview with Robert
van As, lawyer, 30.9.96; Trouw, 23.7.96; Het Parool, 27.7.96.
Comment
The clumsy, if not outrageous, handling of the Sison case by
the Dutch authorities, suggests that weighty political interests
are interfering with the due course of justice. Indeed, there
are strong reasons to believe, that, after years of exile, Jose
Maria Sison continues to be considered a nuisance by powerful
circles inside and outside the Philippines.
Sison has a reputation of being an orthodox Communist hard-liner,
representing the most radical and confrontational tendencies within
the NDFP. As opposed to Nur Misuari, the leader of the Muslim
Moro National Liberation Front, who signed a peace agreement with
the Ramos Government in early September, and who is now running
for elections in the Party of Mr Ramos, there is nothing to suggest
that Mr Sison intends to give up his uncompromising opposition
against the Government. Consequently, he might now be regarded
as a major obstacle to progress in the NDPF-GRP peace negotiations.
Together with the determination of the US Government to eradicate
all remnants of communism in the fast expanding Eastern Asian
economic area, and the strong presence of Dutch based international
companies such as Shell, Unilever, ING-Barring and Philips in
the Philippines, this could well be the explanation for the Dutch
government’s obstinacy in trying to get rid of Sison now,
even at the price of undermining the credibility of Dutch and,
eventually, European asylum policy. This is, indeed, what is at
a stake. For, whether one sympathises with Mr Sison’s ideological
stances or not, it is hard to imagine a political refugee more
genuine in the sense of the Geneva Convention than the Filipino
Communist leader.
N.B
.