By Mata Press Service

The Canadian government has labeled him a terrorist leader.

The Philippines says he is a cold-blooded killer responsible for the murder of thousands of his countrymen.

But to a large segment of Filipino-Canadians, Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, is a revolutionary hero dedicated to liberating the poor masses of the Southeast Asian nation.

Last week, Sison was arrested in Utrecht, Netherlands, where he has been in exile since 1988 for allegedly ordering the murders of two former allies in Manila.

The arrest triggered worldwide protests — including in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal — and calls for his immediate release.

Sison supporters also called for a boycott of Dutch products until the 68-year-old leader is released from jail.

In Vancouver, Filipino-Canadians and their local supporters rallied outside the offices of the Dutch consulate in solidarity with Sison supporters in the United States, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

“Sison has been a vocal critic of the US imperialism and its policies which have led to the devastation and destruction of people’s lives around the world,” said Luningning Imperial, local spokesperson of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS).

“His arrest and false labelling as a ‘terrorist’ and ‘criminal’ is an insult to Professor Sison’s true character since he has devoted his whole life to serve the people’s struggle against exploitation and oppression,” she said. “He believes utterly in the people and their capacity to liberate and govern themselves and would never harm their interests.”

Sison has strong support in the international Filipino migrant worker communities.

There are an estimated seven million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in over 186 countries abroad, including over 500,000 in Canada, making them the third largest visible minority group in the country and the second largest in Vancouver.

“We are here to support the struggle of the Filipino people and other progressive movements around the world against imperialist aggression and the dirty wars they are waging on national liberation movements,” says Aiyanas Ormond of the Vancouver Bus Riders Union.

Retired professor Hari Sharma of SANSAD (South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy) also spoke at the Vancouver rally accusing the Dutch government of “succumbing to the pressures of U.S. imperialism, and its lackey, the comprador government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.” Sharma first met Prof. Sison in India in 1987 when he was just released from prison. He has since befriended Sison and considers him a “very important spokesperson and a daunting figure in anti-imperialist circles.”

Young Filipino-Canadians also performed songs and read poetry written by Sison saying his writings have inspired generations of Filipinos to struggle for national and social liberation in the Philippines.

Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo described the arrest of the Filipino communist rebel leader as “a giant step toward peace, a victory for justice and the rule of law.”

“Sison was suspected of giving orders, from the Netherlands, to murder his former political associates in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara,” said a statement from the Public Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague following the arrest.

Sison denied the charges and now calls himself a political consultant for the Dutch-based National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), which has been involved in off-and-on peace negotiations for many years with the government.

In an interview with Dutch daily De Pers a month ago, Sison cast himself as a peacemaker and mediator in the Philippines. He rejected allegations from Manila about his involvement in crimes in his homeland.

“I am clean, legally speaking also in the Philippines,” Sison had told De Pers.

Sison complained about his financial situation saying that the Dutch government’s freezing of his welfare and pension allowances meant he had to live off gifts from the Filipino community and his wife’s welfare cheques.

“I am poor. Nobody wants to help me financially because when they do they could be accused of helping a terrorist,” he said.

Last March, the Philippine government asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for Sison and other members of the CPP for their alleged role in the killing of suspected “spies and counter-revolutionaries” from 1985 to 1991.

In August last year, forensic investigators found the remains of 67 people from a communist “killing field” in the central island of Leyte.

The communists, who once had more than 20,000 armed fighters, today have fewer than 7,000 armed combatants throughout the Philippines.

In September 2002, The Asian Pacific Post reported that RCMP and Canadian spies are tracking the fundraising activities of several B.C.-based Filipino-Canadian associations to determine if they are pumping money to communist rebels in the Philippines.

This was after Canada joined the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands last week to blacklist Sison’s group, freeze its assets and those of its affiliated organisations and label Sison an official ‘terrorist.’

Two years later, defiant members of the B.C. Filipino community promoted and sold a controversial book in Vancouver, money from which the U.S. says goes to support terrorism in the Philippines.

The book, Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World, Portrait of a Revolutionary, Conversations with Ninotchka Rosca, made its Vancouver debut at the Russian Hall in Burnaby.

The event was held after the office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department had frozen Sison’s advance royalty for the book from the American publisher, Open Hand Publishing.

“This royalty payment has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. It is paid in accordance with a pre-2002 contract which is perfectly legal,” Sison responded in a statement from Holland.

“I am unlawfully deprived of what belongs to me.”

Meanwhile, the Philippines said it is braced for violent fallout from Sison’s arrest with the military going on red alert as his supporters vowed to intensify their insurgency.

“This will result in an all-out war and lead to the end of peace negotiations,” Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the leftist group Bayan, told a news conference.

On-and-off talks to end the 39-year-old insurgency stalled in 2004. The rebels, considered the country’s most serious threat, have continued to carry out attacks, mostly on security forces and infrastructure.

Sison claims he no longer has an operational role in the insurgency.

But the military believes he continues to be its overall leader, often writing revolutionary treatises under the pseudonym Armando Liwanag.

Dutch prosecutors said Sison will be put on trial there. The two countries do not have an extradition treaty.