First change: 17.12.2022 – 14:48
MANILA (AFP) – Filipino Jose Maria Sison, founder of one of the world’s oldest Maoist insurgency movements, has died at the age of 83, the Communist Party of the Philippines said on Saturday.
The former university professor died in the Netherlands, where he has lived in self-imposed exile since the collapse of the peace negotiations in 1987, at the height of this rebellion that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
“He died at around 8:40 p.m. (Philippine time) after two weeks in detention in Utrecht hospital,” the party said in a statement, without specifying the cause of death.
Sison dreamed of overthrowing the government and installing a Maoist-inspired communist regime that would end “US imperialism” in this Southeast Asian archipelago.
The armed conflict that began in 1969 found fertile ground in the sharp divide between rich and poor in the Philippines.
The rebellion also benefited from the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship (1972-1986), when parliament was closed and thousands of opposition figures were tortured or killed.
At its peak in the 1980s, the group numbered 26,000 guerrillas, a number that the Army now believes has been reduced to a few thousand.
Since 1986, successive Philippine governments have held peace talks with the communists through their Dutch-based political arm, the NDF.
Party leaders attempted to form a coalition government with former President Rodrigo Duterte.
There were negotiations to end the uprising, but Duterte broke them off in 2017 by declaring the group a terrorist organization and accusing it of killing police officers and soldiers during the talks.
© 2022 AFP