Exiled Reds prepare for arrival of comrades

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Aug 21): Exiled Reds prepare for arrival of comrades

A party awaits newly released communist leaders in The Netherlands when they arrive for the resumption of peace talks with the government.

Luis Jalandoni, chair of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace panel, said leaders of the communist movement based in The Netherlands were looking forward to a reunion after the government allowed detained communist leaders to be released so they could participate in the negotiations as consultants.

“We will welcome them with Filipino food, sharing of stories, singing,” Jalandoni told the Inquirer in a Facebook chat on Wednesday.

“But we have to prepare for the talks. In Oslo, we are reserving time to [consult] with them [during] the first days [of negotiations],” he said.

Consuelo “Coni” Ledesma, Jalandoni’s wife, said they were looking forward to the reunion outside of prison walls.

“There will be lots of storytelling, reminiscing not only among women [in the group], but with all them,” she said in the same online chat.

Top leaders like Jalandoni and Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison are based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Weeklong talks

The stalled peace negotiations will resume in Oslo, Norway, tomorrow and end on Friday.

Jalandoni said they expected the group of former political detainees to arrive in Oslo today. The Norwegian government is brokering the peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the NDFP.

The members of the group, most of them leaders of the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), will be serving as “peace consultants” to the NDFP in another attempt to end the more than 40-year communist insurgency in the Philippines.

Ledesma said she was excited to reunite with their comrades, most of them she knew personally, like Wilma Tiamzon.

“We were together at the Ipil detention center (in Fort Bonifacio) during martial law,” she said.

Tiamzon and her husband, Benito, were released on Friday and given passports so they could travel to Europe and take part in the peace negotiations.

Late on Friday, the CPP declared a weeklong unilateral ceasefire to encourage the talks, and urged the government to reciprocate with a similar truce “as a show of all-out determination to move forward with peace negotiations.”

The CPP-NPA ceasefire will take effect after midnight today. It will end at midnight on Saturday.

The government responded yesterday, restoring a unilateral truce declared by President Duterte on July 25 but lifted five days later after the NPA killed a militiaman in an ambush and the CPP failed to reciprocate with a similar ceasefire declaration.

The government ceasefire “will last as long as necessary” to encourage the negotiators to push for success, according to Mr. Duterte’s peace adviser, Jesus Dureza.

Ledesma also recalled her meeting with Maria Concepcion Araneta-Bocala during the failed peace talks 1986-87.

“There are lots of stories that I’ve heard about her. She is very famous in Western Visayas,” Ledesma said.

Bocala, 65, is CPP secretary on Panay Island. She was released from detention on Wednesday after a local court granted her petition for bail. She will join the reciprocal panel on socioeconomic issues.

Filipino ‘hosts’

Ledesma said they were busy looking for Filipino families in The Netherlands and in Norway who could accommodate the peace consultants for the duration of the talks.

“Our first task is the assignment of houses where they will stay. With their number, we need to request more families to serve as their hosts,” she said.

Jalandoni said a bigger welcome and “solidarity celebration,” hosted by their Filipino and Dutch friends, would be held in Utrecht after the talks.

He said they would also arrange visits to various sites in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris for their visitors.

The NDFP has been engaged in on-and-off negotiations with the government in the past 27 years.

Peace talks between the insurgents and the government had failed largely due to the insurgents’ insistence on the release of jailed communist leaders.

According to the human rights group Karapatan, at least 11 political prisoners and NDFP consultants have been freed ahead of the resumption of the talks.

Among them are Bocala and Tirso “Ka Bart” Alcantara, who leads the NPA in Southern Tagalog and a member of the CPP Central Committee.

22 consultants

The communist insurgents want 22 NDFP consultants to be released so they can participate in the negotiations.

During a meeting with NDFP leaders in Malacañang on Monday, President Duterte promised to work for the release of the NDFP consultants.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, government peace panel chair, said Mr. Duterte had also instructed the Bureau of Immigration and the Department of Foreign Affairs to process the documents of the consultants so they could travel to Oslo.

Sison acknowledged the President’s help in the release of NDFP consultants protected by the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees.

“Once more, I am grateful to President Duterte for his good acts to move forward the peace negotiations between his government and the NDFP,” Sison told the Inquirer in an online chat on Tuesday.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/808087/exiled-reds-prepare-for-arrival-of-comrades