| Is Joma a Terrorist? By Antonio C. Abaya August 16, 2002 �Terrorist� is one of those judgment-laden words that reveals not only a description of an object but also the partisan side to which the term is being applied by the user. It is a truism that one side�s �terrorist� is the other side�s �freedom fighter.� This is true of all conflicts around the world and at all times. Thus the Huk guerillas of the 1950s were terrorists (or insurgents, dissidents, rebels, renegades, etc) to the Manila government but were freedom fighters to the Partido Kumunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) of Jesus and Jose Lava, William Pomeroy, Renato Constantino Sr., the Lansang family, etc. The demonstrating students on Tienanmen Square in Beijing in May-June 1989 were idealistic pro-democracy activists to the western media and their governments but were pesky termites to the Chinese leadership that had to be squashed and exterminated before they ate away the very foundations of the House of Mao and Deng. In the Afghanistan of the 1980s, the mujahedin organized by Osama bin Laden (and supported by the CIA) were terrorists to the invading Soviets but freedom fighters to the fiercely xenophobic Pashtoon tribesmen, then became terrorists again when the Americans vented their fury on that tragic land after September 11. The ideological relativism in which that the term is applied should not surprise anyone. ***** US Secretary of State Colin Powell recently classified the CPP-NDF-NPA as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and as such subject to military and financial counter-measures by the US government. Not surprisingly, this has upset the local communists and their pro-communist allies in media. And yet, what did they expect? When American troops were first dispatched to Basilan last January, ostensibly to help the Philippine military wipe out the Abu Sayyaf, Joma Sison �analyzed� that the US troops would become legitimate targets for the NPA. (Sison routinely cloaks his orders to the troops in the field under the pretext of �analysis� to avoid being deported from Holland for trying to overthrow, by remote control, a government friendly to Holland). In the 1980s, NPA hitmen (freedom fighters to the communists, terrorists to the Manila government) assassinated an American colonel involved in training Filipino troops in counter-insurgency. (The NPA gunmen were eventually captured and, under questioning, admitted that they had been trained in groups of ten in North Korea. As I wrote before, Joma should move to Pyongyang if he were true to his revolutionary convictions.) That the NPA, contrary to the �analysis� of Sison, has so far not attempted to kill a single American involved in the Balikatan exercises suggests a caution on their part lest they unleash a response that they may not be prepared for. The caution is warranted: the redeployment of undisclosed numbers of Americans from Basilan to undisclosed parts of Luzon also suggests that known and suspected NPA areas will now besubjected to an environment scan with the use of satellite photos, low-flying unmanned aircraft with infra-red and night-vision capability, and electronic listening gear that monitor cell-phone conversations and email traffic. ***** In an obvious charm offensive and PR campaign to soften the image of Joma after the CPP-NDF was tagged a foreign terrorist organization, a hundred of his comrades gathered at the residence of UP President Dodong Nemenzo to recall, for the benefit of the invited media and the ideologically na�ve Sen. Loren Legarda-Leviste, the light moments they had had with the founder of the CPP. �(Joma) is as ordinary as you and I, they say, and definitely not a terrorist. He loves to sing, play basketball, and laughs ahead of his jokes, which only he could understand,� gushed the front-page story in the August 26 issue of, what else, the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Photos of Sison and Jalandoni playing basketball drew the comment of the PDI reporter that �they didn�t look like terrorists at all.� What are terrorists supposed to look like, anyway? Bushy-bearded, wrapped in a bed sheet and head covered with a turban? But that�s only the stereotype generated by September 11. Certainly, Timothy McVeigh did not fit that stereotype image but he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing more than 200 people including dozens of children. McVeigh could have passed for a MacDonald floor supervisor or TV repair man. Like Joma, he did not look like a terrorist. Neither did the IRA and ETA terrorists who by now have exploded dozens of car-bombs in Northern Ireland and Spain and have killed thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians. They were also, for the most part, clean-shaven and ordinary-looking chaps whom one would find singing off-key in a pub or shopping in a supermarket and who played soccer or rugby or jai-alai on weekends like the other chaps in the block. The communists� charm offensive is so shallow that only the congenitally stupid and the ideologically na�ve could have been fooled by it. ***** It is not only in the Philippines that the US has widened its anti-terrorism umbrella to cover non-Islamic targets. In Colombia, the US government has committed $1.5 billion in military and financial aid to the newly installed government of President Alvaro Uribe, who was elected to office on a campaign promise to wage an �all-out war� against Marxist guerillas and right-wing militias, who, combined, control some 40% of that chaotic country�s territory. While the strategic goal of American intervention in Colombia may be to deal a devastating blow to the drug cartels, the same cannot be said of their present intervention in the Philippines, for which the US government has programmed aid totaling a measly $55 million. It may be the reading of the US government that the Philippine military is not capable of waging and winning a war with two fronts, one against Islamic separatists and the other against Maoist revolutionaries, especially if they were to combine forces against the congenitally weak Manila government, as they have done sporadically in the past. It may be the estimate of the Bush government that in order for the US military to maintain its listening posts in the Sulu-Basilan area vis-�-vis the putative pan-Islamic state (that would include parts of southern Philippines) being promoted by the Laskar Jihad and the Jemaat al-Islamiya, it would be necessary to prop up the weak Manila government against the other, more immediate threat from the Maoist revolutionaries of Joma Sison. ***** Joma Sison makes light of the US government�s request with the Netherlands to freeze the assets and bank accounts of the CPP-NDF, saying he had only 1,245.46 euros (or $1,220.70) in his bank account. Kawawa naman, but he did not mention that in the latter half of 1989, after he and Crispin Beltran of the KMU publicly applauded the massacre of demonstrating students in Tienanmen Square by the People�s Liberation Army, some of their na�ve funding organizations in Western Europe wisened up to the real Maoist revolutionary intentions of their wards and discontinued their contributions, apparently forcing the CPP-NDF to dabble in counterfeit money. One of their Dutch couriers was arrested by Swiss police after he deposited $3 million into a Swiss bank account, half of it in counterfeit notes. Long live the Revolution! ***** The bulk of this article appeared in the September 2, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to "Is Joma a Terrorist?" A TERRORIST is a member of a non-governmental group who uses against innocent civilians terror in aim (sic) to reach a political goal. The NPA uses this kind of methods (sic). Therefore their leaders and members can be considered as (sic) terrorists, The world freedom fighter is totally misplaced. A freedom fighter fights for freedom against a foreign power who has conquered another country. And not in order to replace a democratic government by a dictature. (sic) With regards, (sic) Mr. Pacha. emsi [email protected] September 10, 2002 MY REPLY. A terrorist is also someone who insists on murdering the English language and hides behind the anonymity of a pseudonym. ***** IS JOMA a terrorist? Perhaps we should note that there is evidence, much of it from NPA insiders, to show that Joma Sison masterminded the Plaza Miranda bombing. For that massacre alone, he should be labeled a terrorist. God bless! Manny Amador. [email protected] September 11, 2002 ***** MR. PACHA writes: "A terrorist is a member of a non-governmental group who uses against innocent civilians terror in aim to reach a political goal. The nPA uses this kind of methods. Therefore their leaders and members can be considered as terrorists." Weird yung reasoning. Napaka-simplistic. Pakibasa po ang kasaysayan ng NPA at paki-verify yung samu't saring 'terrorist acts' na ibinibintang sa kanila:) "The world freedom fighter is totally misplaced. A freedom fighter fights for freedom against a foreign power who has conquered another country. And not in order to replace a democratic government by a dictature." Hindi ren. Sa isang isang bansa ang lider ay tula na tutang susunod sa lahat ng - ayon sa kaibigan ko'y - katarantaduhang pasukin ng US, mukhang may papel silang ginagampanan. At siyangapala, sa Consti at program ng NDF, malinaw na nakahanay ang tipo ng gubyernong nais ipalit sa nais nitong gibain. Pag binasa mo nang maayos yun, baka nga mas mag mukha pang diktadura ang kasalukuyang rehimen na nagsusulong ng anti-terrorism bill. (Sa ilalim ng bill na ito, dahil sa mga pinagsasabi ko'y malamang ituring na akong terorista.:) Ederic Penaflor Eder. [email protected] September 15, 2002 ***** EDERIC PENAFLOR Eder wrote: "Weird yung reasoning. Napaka-simplistic. Pakibasa po ang kasaysayan ng NPA at paki-verify yung samu't saring 'terrorist acts' na ibinibintang sa kanila.:)" The Plaza Miranda Bombing surely comes to mind. "At siyangapala, sa Consti at program ng NDF, malinaw na nakahanay ang tipo ng gubyernong nais ipaplit sa nais nitong gibain. Pagbinasa mo..." Yeah, right. The manifestoes of all communist movements sound great. In practice, they turn out to be power-hungry dictators, period. Try selling that to the 'comrades' in East Germany or the boat people. God bless! Manny Amador. [email protected] September 16, 2002 ***** YOU WROTE: " 'Terrorist' is one those judgment-laden words that reveals not only a description of an object but also the partisan side to which the term is being applied by the user. It is a truism that one side's terrorist is the other side's 'freedom fighter'". Actually, there is a generally accepted (by whom? ACA) definition of "terrorist", which admittedly is widely abused (so it is not 'generally accepted', after all. ACA). The media would do the public a great service if they would use it explicitly; instead, statements like the above, unnecessarily blur a distinction which is quite clear and plain. A terrorist is one who practices violence against THIRD PARTIES in order to create a STATE OF MIND in his opponent that favors his goals, which are usually political. Thus an irregular fighter (guerrillero) who attacks (however sneakily) the military forces of his enemy is not a terrorist, though his enemies may find it convenient to call him that. But a Japanese who murders Puerto Rican pilgrims in an attempt to bring about a policy change by Israel (the Lod Airport massacre) clearly is a terrorist - belonging to the "international" or "transnational" subtype of that category. The issue is admittedly confused by the many organizations that practice both terrorism and some form of irregular warfare. Al-Fat'ah, the Palestinian Arab umbrella anti-Israeli organization, is one such. Arafat is thus both a terrorist and a guerrillero. (So media should sometimes call him a terrorist, sometimes a guerrillero? How many Palestinians do you think will agree with that dual-labeling? ACA). Abu Sayyaf, with its predilection for taking and murdering innocent civilian hostages and its rather poor and pusillanimous performance against the military, certainly qualifies as a terrorist organization (but will they agree to be called terrorists? Probably not. Exactly my point. ACA), and I am happy to see it declared so. Likewise the NPA, which practices guerilla tactics on occasion, also deserves the terrorist designation for its extortion, assassination and other violence directed at civilians. It has been a constant refrain on the Left that the result of Bush's war on terror will be the designation of mere political dissidents as terrorists, and some supposedly allied countries have already tried this. To the best of my knowledge, however, the US has yet to go along with any such designation, and I doubt that it will. One of the advantages of the much-decried (again, by the Left) "unilateralism" of the US government is that there is no need to sacrifice the truth in order to obtain the dubious cooperation of genuinely repressive regimes. Marc de Piolenc, Iligan City. [email protected] September 10, 2002 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |