Communist chief Sison tells Duterte: ‘Forget useless USA, deal with China’

communist
NPA founder and leader-in-exile Joma Sison tells Duturte: “Forget the US, they’re useless, only deal with China. The communist is pictured delivering a 1986 speech.

The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines has urged President Duterte’s administration to “Forget the US, they’re useless, let’s just deal with China.”

Joma Sison has told the president and his cabinet to stop dealing with the United States and come to terms with China in bilateral talks. He has repeatedly has referred to the United States as “useless imperialists”.

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Sison – who was Duterte’s tutor at university – said: “I wish to discuss with you how US imperialism has imposed itself on the Filipino people and violated their national sovereignty and thwarted their aspirations for democracy, social justice and development since 1898 by military, political, economic and cultural means.”

In 2002, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that the the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army were to be listed as terrorist organisations.

The US also listed Sison, who lives in exile in the Netherlands, as a supporter of terrorism.

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Secretary Powell said: “The group has killed, injured and kidnapped numerous Philippine citizens, including government officials.”

The State Department also made it illegal for any US citizen to provide support to the CPP and/or the NPA.

Today, the Duterte administration wants to bring Sison back home in the hope of peace talks. However, the USA has put an arrest warrant on Sison should he pass through any airport in the world.

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The New People’s Army are a Maoist revolutionary army that has been waging war against the Philippine state since it was founded in March 1969.

The NPA engages its guerrilla struggle under the Maoist theory of “Protracted People’s War”. This involves winning over the countryside, and the peasants, before moving on to take over the cities.

During the Marcos dictatorship they enjoyed their most popular period, with many, particularly poorer peasants, seeing the prospect of socialism as a great alternative to the poverty of the time.

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