Jose Maria Sison sought to overthrow the Philippine government and envisioned a Maoist-style communist regime
The leader of one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies has died at the age of 83, the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The former university professor Jose Maria Sison died in Netherlandswhere he lived in exile after the failure of peace negotiations in 1987, while the insurgency, in which tens of thousands of lives were lost, was at its height.
“Sison (…) died at around 8:40 p.m. (Philippine time) after two weeks of hospitalization in a hospital in Utrecht,” the Communist Party of the Philippines said in a statement, without specifying the cause of his death.
“The proletariat and the working people of the Philippines mourn the death of their teacher and mentor,” he added.
Jose Maria Sison sought to overthrow the Philippine government, envisioning a Maoist-style communist regime that would end “American imperialism” in the former US colony.
The armed struggle, which began in 1969, was based on the experience of the world communist movement and found fertile ground in the Philippines, a country with glaring contrasts between the rich and the poor.
It was strengthened during the days of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986), when the legislature was a mere rubber stamp, the press was silenced and thousands of dissidents were tortured and killed.
At its zenith in the 1980s, the insurgency numbered about 26,000 fighters, but according to the armed forces its strength has shrunk to just a few thousand today.
Since 1986, one government after another in the Philippines has held peace talks with the Maoist rebels, through their political arm in the Netherlands, the National Democratic Front.
With the insurgency weakened, party leaders sought to form a coalition government with former President Rodrigo Duterte.
Peace talks were held in the hope of ending the war, but Mr Duterte ended them in 2017 and branded the group a “terrorist organisation”, accusing it of killing police and soldiers while negotiations were underway.
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