Peace Negotiations and “Terrorist” Blacklist as Obstacle
Soon after the fall of Marcos in 1986, the Cory Aquino regime proposed to negotiate with the CPP, NPA and NDF a ceasefire agreement as the prelude to negotiating the substantive agenda for peace negotiations. A 60-day ceasefire agreement was signed in November 1986. But it was broken when the presidential guards opened fire on thousands of peasants and their urban supporters peacefully crying for land reform in front of the presidential palace on January 22, 1987. Aquino did not hold to account the military and police officers who perpetrated the massacre and she proclaimed instead the unsheathing of the sword of war against the revolutionary movement in February 1987.
She used the ceasefire negotiations in Manila and the ceasefire agreement as convenient devices for consolidating power and for placing the NDF negotiators and their supporters under military surveillance. But the threats of military coup from the Enrile-RAM faction and the pro-Marcos faction within the reactionary armed forces persisted. Aquino made overtures to the NDF for peace negotiations in 1989 when she sent to me emissaries, the most important of whom was our mutual friend, Rep. Jose V. Yap. But her defense secretary Ramos was obstructive.
When Ramos became president, he sent Yap back to The Netherlands in 1992. Thus, The Hague Joint Declaration was initially signed by the delegations of the Manila government and the NDFP. It defined the framework of prospective peace negotiations. It set forth the purpose of ending the armed conflict by negotiating and agreeing on basic social, economic and political reforms to address the roots of the armed conflict and lay the basis for a just and lasting peace; the principle of non-capitulation; the guidance of mutually acceptable principles, such as national sovereignty, democracy and social justice; the four substantive agenda; and the basic methods of negotiating each major item in the agenda.
The two delegations continued to forge major agreements, subject to the approval of their respective principals. These included the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), the Ground Rules for the Negotiating Panels and the Joint Agreement on Reciprocal Working Committees. The formal peace negotiations opened in Brussels in 1995. The negotiating panels exchanged their credentials. In 1998 they succeeded in forging the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
Ramos and his Speaker de Venecia wanted so much that I would appear with them in a projected ceremony of signing the CARHRIHL at the Quirino grandstand in 1988. To assure me that I had no legal liabilities in the Philippines, the Secretary of Justice Silvestre Bello III issued a certification that there was no pending criminal charge against me in view of the nullification of the subversion charge upon the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law in 1992 and the dismissal of a false charge of multiple murder in 1994. However, I did not travel to the Philippines in 1998 because the promise to release political prisoners priorly was not fulfilled.
On behalf of the Manila government, Estrada approved the CARHRIHL in 1998. But he terminated the JASIG and therefore the peace negotiations in 1999 in reaction to the capture of General Obillo by the NPA and to the NDFP condemnation of the Manila government´s Visiting Forces Agreement with the US. This agreement has allowed the US to bring in US military troops and weapons of mass destruction to the Philippines at any time under the pretext of joint military exercises and other pretexts.
The peace negotiations were resumed soon after Estrada was ousted from his office by popular uprising and then Vice President Arroyo succeeded him. With the Norwegian government as the facilitator, the negotiating panels of the Manila government and the NDFP reaffirmed all previous agreements and agreed to establish in Manila the secretariat of the Joint Monitoring Committee under CARHRIHL. Even as the peace negotiations were going on, the reactionary armed forces, police and paramilitary forces engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations. But when the infamous torturer Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo was killed by the NPA because he resisted arrest, the Arroyo regime used this single incident as an excuse for refusing to negotiate further.
The regime was vociferous in seeking to stop me from exercising my democratic right to speak freely and in preconditioning the resumption of negotiations with the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces and the people. Thus, for the purpose of blackmail and pressure, it requested the US government to designate the CPP, NPA and myself as the NDFP chief political consultant as “foreign terrorists” in November 2001. Accordingly, the US designated them in August 2002. The Dutch government likewise designated me as a “terrorist” and further curtailed my fundamental rights, froze my bank account and terminated all my social benefits (living allowance, housing, health insurance and pension). Subsequently, it was the prime movant in having the Council of European Union put me in the “terrorist blacklist” of the European Union in October 2002.
After the Arroyo regime approached the NDFP for resumption of talks in 2004, the two negotiating panels met twice in Oslo to forge Oslo Joint Statements I and II to tackle mainly the problem posed by the terrorist listing of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant by the US, European Union and other governments.
The Manila government´s failure to comply with the terms of the aforesaid Oslo statements led the NDFP to propose postponement of the formal talks slated for August, 2005 in order to give more time for said government to make compliance.
The Arroyo regime reacted by “suspending” the JASIG and going on a rampage to abduct, torture and imprison or murder NDFP consultants and staffers. It escalated the violation of the human rights of persons associated with the NDFP in the peace negotiations as well as a wide range of social activists. Upon the request of the Manila government which supplied false allegations against me, the Dutch government raided the NDFP office in Utrecht and the residences of NDFP negotiators and consultants and arrested me and put me in solitary confinement from August 28 to September 13, 2007 on trumped up charges of murder.
These baseless charges had been previously invalidated in June 2007 by judgment of the Philippine Supreme Court on a trumped up case of rebellion against me and 50 others, including progressive members of the Philippine Congress and anti-Arroyo military officers. And yet the Manila government did not bother to inform the Dutch government about said judgment.
After Aquino became president in 2010, the formal talks between the negotiating panels occurred twice in Oslo within the first half of 2011. On both occasions the negotiating panel of the Manila government sought to undermine and nullify previous agreements. It denounced The Hague Joint Declaration as a “document of perpetual division.” It considered the JASIG as non-binding and without effect in protecting the NDFP consultants, security officers and staffers who had been arrested by the military.
The Aquino regime has taken advantage of the fact that the Dutch police seized and destroyed the encrypting and decrypting programs related to the documents of identification under JASIG. It has condoned the violations of the CARHRIHL committed by the Arroyo regime and has increased the victims of such violations. The victims have suffered abductions, torture, illegal detention or extrajudicial killing.
The number of political prisoners has risen. They are mentioned as connected with the NPA as fighters or as accomplices and yet they are accused of common crimes in violation of CARHRIHL and the Hernandez political offense doctrine. Like predecessor regimes, the Aquino regime has failed to comply with the provision of the CARHRIHL for the indemnification of the victims of human rights violations under the Marcos fascist regime.