OPE-L message, [OPE-L] Walden Bello

Red-baiting and Baseless Accusations
have no place in the People's Movement
Official Statement of the Regional Secretariat
of the Asian Students Association
January 17, 2005

We write this in the light of a statement released by the Focus on the
Global South yesterday January 16, 2005, entitled "Assassination and
violence have no role in civil society."

We in the Asian Students Association regional secretariat respect the
Focus's position with regards to the ongoing matter between Mr. Walden
Bello and the Communist Party of the Philippines. Nonetheless, they
could have just stopped there. But they did not.

We find it amazing how the Focus suddenly dropped names of organizations
towards the end of the statement (see second to the last paragraph) and
appealed for their sense of decency. There is nothing decent in what is
practically red-baiting.

For did they not resort to red-baiting when they mentioned the Asian
Students Association, among many other organizations? Is this in accord
to their definition and objective of pluralism? Is this not toeing the
line of US imperialist terrorist-listing?

We will not leave the questions unanswered. In the spirit objectivity
and critical bias, we shall explain each and every one of them here.

On red-baiting

Has the Focus thought what could possibly happen to the leaders and
members of the ASA when it resorted to red-baiting?

Is it not an historical fact that the United States government has used
the same tactic in committing genocidal acts against open resistance
movements in Chile, Vietnam, Indonesia and Korea, among many others?

Is it not what the repressive governments of Ferdinand Marcos
(Philippines), Augusto Pinochet (Chile) and General Suharto (Indonesia)
wielded to legitimize massive political crackdown on movements and peoples?

We believe that the McCarthyist Era is over. Yet surprisingly, a group
who professes to belong to the civil society and supposedly meets the
challenges of the future with democratic debates has remained stuck up
in it.

By resorting to this, the Focus has subjected the regional secretariat
and the whole membership of the ASA to open fascism and repression.

Right now, many of our members are already living under repressive
states and are fighting for the legality and legitimacy of their work
and objectives under harsh conditions.

Some states, until now, are using the tired old red scare to suppress
legitimate student and youth organizations. One vivid example is the
irresponsible tagging of the League of Filipino Students (which Focus
also maliciously mentioned in their letter) and the College Editors
Guild of the Philippines, both long-time members of the Asian Students
Association, as communist fronts which led to the rapacious military
crackdown and killing of their members without due process.

In the current context of the hysteria against terror, many countries
are already in the process of institutionalizing anti-terrorist laws
such as Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the experience
of our members in Malaysia, the Internal Security Act has been used by
the state to effectively suppress the people's dissent through
warrantless arrests and illegal detentions.

We ask then: has not Focus given the license and ammunition to the
possible heightening of this attack on our members?

Pluralism?

Why is Focus selective in the forms of struggles when they profess to be
pluralist? Does their version of pluralism exclude groups whose
principles and forms of struggle are unacceptable to them?

Civil society, we believe and we have learned, does not pass judgment on
anyone or anything without sufficient information and bases. It is in
the spirit of objectivity and critical thinking that we respect due
process, research and collective analysis before coming up with a
conclusion. I guess not one person in her right mind would violate this
simple method.

What of the Focus?

What audacity has the Focus to determine which one is legitimate and
which one is not? What gives them the right to pinpoint and accuse
organizations without providing them the chance to speak up?

Has not the damage been done even before we can possibly react?

To our colleagues in the civil society, we ask for your objectivity.

The History and Legacy of the ASA

By putting us in the line of fire, did the Focus not attack the
integrity and legacy of the ASA? Is this a civil act of a civil society
organization?

The ASA, since our establishment in 1969, has remained true to our
tradition and principle of recognizing and respecting the right of our
members and movements to determine their own form of struggle.

We will not deny that some of our members, from then until now, have
taken up arms to resist their respective repressive states. We shall not
deny them for it is an affront to the young lives that have been
sacrificed for freedom and democracy. Our members in Palestine, Burma,
Laos and even East Timor before its independence have chosen to practice
their right to rebel.

Even the international community respects this right of the people. That
is why there exist the rules of war and international conventions and
protocols that guide the conduct of war.

Solidarity is deeply rooted in the respect of independence and
initiative of movements. That is why, until now, despite the difference
in forms of struggles of our members ÃÂ" from the tree-hugging activists
to those who assert students' rights in schools to those who defend
their sovereignty against occupation ÃÂ" we remain united in the
principles of anti-imperialism, democracy and social justice.

This is why we believe that the Focus on the Global South does NOT have
any right at all to infringe on the independence of any movement,
organization or individual for that matter. You do not have any right to
judge or label the Asian Students Association.

If the Focus's brand of pluralism includes impinging on one's rights and
independence, then it is fraudulent, dishonest, self-contradicting and
self-serving.

Mouthing the imperialist line

Now that we have explained ourselves, we go now to the last.

For did they not, with their statements, toe the line of U.S.
imperialism when the latter high-handedly placed legitimate
organizations, individuals and revolutionary movements in its foreign
terrorist list without due process?

By failing to provide their readers the arguments between the two
concerned parties beyond their statement, they have deprived their
network and their friends the opportunity to be critical and unbiased in
their decision. They only provided one news item and not one from the
statements they have mentioned of Mr. Fidel Agcaoili and Prof. Jose
Maria Sison.

Is this not uncritical bias? Is this not so like the U.S. imperialist
hysteria on the war of terror?

There is just one last question ringing in our heads: again, why the
mention of organizations? Could it possibly be turning the tables
against us, putting us at the defensive, discrediting our names in the
global anti-globalization movement?

Why waste seven lines of the statement to simply drop names of
organizations?

Do tell, could this probably be the Focus's own "hitlist", as mentioned
by Norberto Gonzales, the chief national security of Philippine
president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and who caused the killing of more
than 40 coordinators of progressive party-lists tagged as communist fronts?

Could it be an addendum as well to the U.S.' own foreign terrorist list?

If it is so, where is the pluralism in that? Where is the civility in
that? Tell us, does this undoing speak well of civil society?

Note: In the interest of fairness, objectivity and democratic debate, we
urge our serious colleagues in the civil society to read the statements
of Mr. Agcaoili, Prof. Sison and even check the website of the "hitlist"
they are mentioning at www.philippinerevolution.org, December 7 issue of
Ang Bayan.

We guess Mr. Bello knows the parameters of this debate, of his exchanges
with Misters Agcaoili and Sison.

----------------------

WALDEN BELLO EXPOSES HIMSELF

AS A PRO-US PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVE

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison

NDFP Chief Political Consultant

In his column in Viewpoints of the Philippine Daily
Inquirer, December 29, 2004, Bello persists in his
canard that the Communist Party of the Philippines
(CPP) is out to eliminate him and others physically
just because they hold ideas counter to the CPP and
the new democratic revolution.

He uses this lie in order to accuse me of being âthe
one that literally calls the shotsâ and in order to
reinforce the baseless âterroristâ listing made by
the US, Dutch, European Council and other governments.
The malicious attack made by Bello and others on my
person is orchestrated with attacks unleashed by the
psywar and intelligence agencies of Washington and the
Manila government.

In two press statements, one on December 26 and
another on December 27, I made the observation that a
diagram of the organizational fragmentation of petty
bourgeois anti-communist groups in the Philippines and
their ideological and political connections with
Trotskyite and social democratic groups abroad cannot
be a âhit listâ (the pejorative term Walden Bello and
Etta Rosales used in their December 26 open letter).

I also commented that if Bello, Rosales and the like
had complaints of human rights violations against any
revolutionary force and/or personnel they could submit
their complaints to the NDFP section of the Joint
Monitoring Committee (JMC). The JMC has been created
jointly by the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of
the Philippines (NDFP) in compliance with the GRP-NDFP
Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights
and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

False Accusations in Belloâs Anti-Communist Propaganda

Since the establishment of the Joint Secretariat of
the JMC in Manila a few months ago, with the active
support of the Norwegian government, only two formal
complaints of human rights violations have been filed
against units and personnel of the New Peopleâs Army
(NPA) in sharp contrast to the 275 charges made
against the reactionary armed forces of the
Philippines, Philippine National Police and related
armed personnel of the GRP. Bello and Rosales are big
liars in making the revolutionary forces appear as
human rights violators and the AFP and PNP regulars as
not.

So far, Bello, Rosales and Akbayan have not submitted
any formal complaint and evidence to the JMC about
their claims to being the subject of what they
consider as grave threats to their lives related to
the diagram. Neither have they made any formal
complaint and presented any evidence for their claims
that the revolutionary forces impose taxes on
electoral parties and candidates. They are merely
interested in spewing out anti-communist propaganda
and trying to malign the Communist Party of the
Philippines from the flanks.

As exponent of civil society so-called, Bello is a
well-behaved and obedient citizen of the violent state
of the US-lining comprador big bourgeoisie and
landlord class. He is also a highly paid hack whose
air miles of traveling and hotel bills can compete
with those of high ranking officials of the US State
Department. He can sell ideas for conferences on a
wide range of topics in quick succession in different
capitals of the world. Thus, I am not at all surprised
that he is vigorously and stridently opposed to the
organized forces and people waging the new democratic
revolution through peopleâs war.

Bello has a purpose for inventing the canard that the
revolutionary forces are out to get him and others
merely for talking and writing against the revolution.
He calculatingly obscures the fact that Romulo
Kintanar and Arturo Tabara were publicly accused of
grave crimes like murder, gross malversation of funds,
robbery and the like so many years before the NPA
sought to arrest them.

His real purpose is to gain another platform for
attacking the CPP and its revolutionary line. He goes
so far as to claim that he was once a CPP insider in
order to present himself as a credible informer. He
asserts that I am not just a consultant but
something else worthy of the orchestrated attacks
unleashed against me by the US, the local
reactionaries and their special psywar agents. Bello
started to openly attack the CPP in 1986. That was
nearly two decades ago. He cannot be a reliable source
of current information about the internal affairs of
the CPP.

In trying to do a witchhunt and make me appear as
one deserving of the imperialist attacks inflicted on
me, Bello states, âWhile you have been busy drawing
diagrams of your perceived opponents and dreaming of
your of world revolution in the safe confines of
Utrecht, your so-called counterrevolutionaries have
actually been engaged in helping create a truly global
movement for changeââ

He has absolutely no factual basis for accusing me of
drawing.the diagram, which he has misrepresented as a
âhit listâ of the CPP. Personally, I would have
preferred to draw a diagram of his anti-communist US
connections, especially with certain institutes and
agencies that manufacture new slogans for glossing
over the extremely oppressive and exploitative
character of US imperialism.   Belloâs bravado comes
from his being bankrolled by US-controlled conduits
and from assurances of protection by the coercive
apparatuses of the state in the US, Thailand and the
Philippines.

The Second Great Rectification Movement of the CPP has
criticized, repudiated and rectified the ideological
and political errors, including those that led to the
bloody witchhunt Kampanyang Ahos. It has condemned
the vicious crimes associated with Kampanyang Ahos.
But Bello has the temerity to blame these on the CPP
even as he protects and collaborates with Ricardo
Reyes and Nathan Quimpo. In CPP publications, these
two have been identified as among those most
responsible for the unjust killings and torture of
some hundreds of CPP cadres and members, NPA
commanders and fighters and mass activists..

According to the CPP, all those who were chiefly
responsible for Kampanyang Ahos and other criminal
outrages have fled the CPP and have formed various
pseudo-progressive groups connected with the GRP and
big compradors and landlords as well as with
Trotskyite and social-democratic groups abroad.
Bello and Rosales are in one of these groups (Akbayan)
and are allied to others on the common ground of
opposing the CPP and the revolutionary movement.
However, I would not say that those who belong to
these small groups are all criminally liable.

Belloâs vile anticommunism drives him to a frenzy of
ranting in accusing the CPP of having given a bad name
to the left because of âfanaticismâ, having
âdegenerated into an Al Qaeda type fundamentalist
sectâ, being âan ally of US hegemonyâ,   having
âmurderous behaviorâ, being responsible for
deforestation and the floods, and   making âleft wing
fascismâ âone of the basic problemsâ, âalong with
feudal landed structures, transnational capitalism and
US imperialism.â

Bello as Phoney Progressive and as Pro-US
Propagandist

After his vicious outburst of invectives, he concludes
triumphantly that he and his ilk have gained the world
with their happy wishes for âpluralismâ, âdemocratic
debateâ and ânonviolenceâ and that in the 21st century
under conditions of US dominance as sole superpower,
ever worsening crisis and ever escalating plunder and
war, the CPP and all revolutionaries are âfossils left
behind in the mud of the 20th centuryâ.

But why would the political and ideological masters of
Bello consider the CPP as the biggest threat to the
ruling system? Are not the revolutionary people and
the forces of national liberation and socialism on the
rise again after all the failed attempts of US
imperialism and its camp followers to wipe them out
completely with the use of ideological, political,
economic and cultural offensives in the wake of the
temporary success of modern revisionism in destroying
socialist systems from within and likewise the
effectiveness of neocolonialism in coopting the
nominally independent countries?

Bello exposes himself as a phoney progressive and as
a phoney anti-imperialist by mocking at the
revolutionary forces of national liberation and
socialism and showing off his Philistine sense of
comfort within the confines of the imperialist system.
Could he have been able to gather large amounts of
funds from imperialist agencies through various
conduits for holding international conferences were
these not for countering the anti-imperialist
movement?

His Focus on the Global South is well connected to
the imperialist-funded conduit Transnational Institute
and the Trotskyite and reformist ATTAC of France
(begging for a percentage of cross border currency
transactions as Tobin taxes supposedly for funding
priorities such as the prevention of global warming,
disease, and poverty). The funds flowing into the
projects of Bello can be traced ultimately to
foundations and institutes linked to the US government
and the US monopoly bourgeoisie.

Belloâs usual tack is to pretend at criticizing
âglobalizationâ and âwarâ, with the objective of
trying to head off real progressives and
anti-imperialists and then to swing the conferences he
organizes into reformist channels for improving the
imperialist system. In the style of the Jesuits in
the Counter-Reformation, he employs the time-worn
tactics of semantically appearing to be
anti-imperialist and yet being in essence for the
preservation of the imperialist system by attacking
the revolutionaries and harping on reformism against
the revolution.

It is absolutely untrue that Bello and his kind were
ever genuinely cooperative with the patriotic and
progressive forces in the Philippines. While the
Filipino people were struggling to overthrow the
Marcos fascist dictatorship in the period of 1984 to
1986, he was spreading the line that Marcos ought
not to be overthrown because the US considered him not
only as part of the problem but also as part of the
solution. He was also trying to conjure the illusion
that âpopular democracyâ could replace âelite
democracyâ without armed revolution and that low-value
added semimanufacture were the âcutting edge of
industrializationâ.

After the overthrow of Marcos in 1986, he started to
attack the CPP in a series of articles. He used the
criticism of the militarism and Kampanyang Ahos and
the 1986 boycott policy to call for the liquidation of
the CPP and the end of the revolutionary armed
struggle in favor of reformism. He spread the line
that the armed revolution in the Philippines was
unnecessary and hopeless because the US and World Bank
were determined to help the Aquino regime to carry out
land reform. He also harped on the line that the
revolutionary movement should shift to opposing Japan
as the main target because this was supposedly
displacing the US as No. 1 power in East Asia. What
he meant in fact was to tout as the better option
keeping US hegemony with the assistance of Europe.

In the struggle against the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation in the 1990s, he positioned himself
against the national democratic mass organizations. He
relished being the loyal and friendly critic and
consultant of the US and the multilateral agencies
like the IMF, World Bank and WTO. In the days and
nights of the Battle in Seattle in 1999, imperialist
funding afforded Bello and his kind expensive hotel
billeting   The mass activists in the streets
denounced him and his ilk as tools of the WTO for his
role as a subsidized pseudo-critics of US imperialism.

Now, Bello once again claims to have fought and
frustrated the WTO in Cancun. But no imperialist
conduit-funded entity could have done better than more
than 20 third world countries (including such big
countries as China, India and Brazil) that resisted
the excessive US impositions.   After the massive
anti-war mass actions of 2003 by tens of millions of
people in hundreds of cities, coordinated by ANSWER,
Not in Our Name, United for Peace and International
League of Peoplesâ Struggle (ILPS), Bello belatedly
managed to raise the funds for conferences to
misrepresent himself and his kind as leaders of the
movement against the US war of aggression in Iraq and
as defenders of the peoples of Iraq and Palestine.

In fact, the futile objective of the
pseudo-progressives, who are in the pay of conduits of
US imperialism, is to seize the initiative from the
genuine anti-imperialist forces and put up a platform
for opposing wars of national liberation, condoning
the official violence of reactionary states and
broadcasting reformist slogans in support of
imperialism and its puppet states.

These pseudo-progressives spread counterrevolutionary
notions, such as that âtransnationalismâ, âglobalismâ
and âenvironmentalism have invalidated the struggle
for all-round national independence, that national
industrialization is âenvironmentally unsustainableâ
and that âcivil societyâ and âculture of nonviolenceâ
are the politically correct expressions. The primary
objective of all these expressions is to discredit
armed revolutions and to uphold the âlegitimateâ
monopoly of violence by the imperialist and puppet
states.

Even in the most glittering phrases, the reformist and
counterrevolutionary notions cannot gloss over the
fact that the biggest tragedies of the 20th century
are those arising from monopoly capitalism or
imperialism.   US imperialism has been responsible for
the worst tragedies, such as the unbridled plunder and
wars of aggression, in the latter half of the century.
These continue to this day because imperialism
.persists as the scourge of humankind.

The proposals of Bello and his ilk for the 21st
century would continue to mire the Filipino people in
the same tragedies they experienced under the US
empire of the 20th century. However, the proletarian
revolutionary movement and the broad anti-imperialist
movement of the people of the world are resurgent and
are growing in strength through revolutionary
struggle. ###

------------------

<http://qc.indymedia.org/news/2005/01/2366.php>

In solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements
by Pierre Rousset Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 7:43 PM

What is at stake? The security and the lives of many activists, who are
going to be forced into exile or killed if nothing is done. The future
of the whole Filipino Left, which remains quite rich and active in spite
of past and present odds. The dynamics of the international movements we
are engaged in, laying new foundations for radical change. The very
legitimacy of our fight: how to give a second breath to socialist
alternatives if we prove unable to defend our most basic principles? In
more than one way, the solidarity with the Filipino progressive and
revolutionary movements threatened by the CPP is a death or life question.

In solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements
threatened by the CPP

A new Letter of Concern

Pierre Rousset, January 18, 2005

January 15, 2005. Focus on the Global South issued a "Statement of
Concern" in response to the publication by the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP) of a list of "counterrevolutionary" organizations and
individuals where Walden Bello, its Executive Director, and fourteen
other activists are singled out. (1)

This issue has to be taken very seriously. For more than ten years now,
the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has "condemned" to death
and actually assassinated cadres from other revolutionary and
progressive Filipino organizations. In January 2003, this policy took a
sharp turn to the worst, prompting me to circulate a first "Letter of
Concern". (2) The situation aggravated continuously in 2004, with an
increasing number of legal political activists and mass movement
organizers killed or threatened.

In the December 7, 2004 issue of its central publication, Ang Bayan, the
CPP published a "diagram" of Filipino "counterrevolutionary groups" and
their supposed international links. (3) In another situation, or in
another country, we could dismiss such a publication as a usual
_expression of ultra-sectarianism with limited implications.
Unfortunately, this is not the case here. It announces a new stage in
the CPP's policy of threats and assassinations.

[...]

---------------------

Why We Have been Marked out for Elimination

By Walden Bello, Chairman Emeritus, Akbayan (Citizens'Action Party)

Jose Maria Sison must take us for fools. He and the Communist Party
leadership compile a list of living and assassinated
"counterrevolutionaries," disseminate it among CPP members, then
claim this is simply a harmless exercise in information
dissemination!

Prof. Sison has a really low opinion of the public. Does he really
think ordinary readers are so stupid as to believe that he is just a
consultant to the CPP and not its chairman, its pontifex maximus, the
one that literally calls the shots?

Is he so out of touch as not to realize that the informed reader need
not be a card-carrying party member to know that in fundamentalist
Marxist Leninist parties like the CPP, being
branded "counterrevolutionary" is practically a death sentence, with
the only question being the time and place when the party will carry
it out?

This is the hideous truth that Sison tries to cover up by his verbal
acrobatics, which attempt to cover up the CPP's mistake of having
made the hitlist public by cooking up the canard that we are part of
a plot to discredit the CPP and "assassinate" his character. The CPP
has long discredited itself, a process which began with the party's
internal massacre of over 1,000 of its best cadres in Operation Ahos
and other purges carried out in the mid-eighties.

In his desperate effort to set us up for elimination, Mr. Sison
implies we receive "imperialist" funds to hold conferences and write
books. Yes, Mr. Sison, we have organized international conferences to
formulate strategies to drive the US out of Iraq and Israel from
Palestine, but with funds raised from progressive, not imperialist,
sources. Yes, Mr. Sison, we plead guilty to having written books -
but books documenting the depredations of US and other transnational
corporations and exploring alternatives to corporate-led
globalization.

While you have been busy drawing up diagrams of your perceived
opponents and dreaming of world revolution in the safe confines of
Utrecht, your so-called counterrevolutionaries have actually been
engaged in helping create a truly global movement for change - a
pluralist and democratic enterprise that has, among other things,
brought about the collapse of the ministerials of the World Trade
Organization, the main agency of corporate-driven globalization,
in Seattle and Cancun.

That the CPP is an agent of progressive change is a bad joke, indeed
a sick joke. Today's CPP is not the party of brave but open-minded
revolutionaries that we were once part of in the dark days of the
Marcos dictatorship. Today's CPP has degenerated into an Al Qaeda-
type fundamentalist sect that that is simply concerned with imposing
its terrible vision of the future on the Filipino people.

Because the CPP's fanaticism has given the left such a bad name,
paradoxically enough it serves objectively as an ally of US hegemony
locally. Indeed, what better ally can the US have than the CPP-NPA?
Anti-communists and US operatives do not need to cook up propaganda
campaigns to discredit the left. They simply have to point to the
murderous behavior of the New People's Army. They simply have to
point to the system of "revolutionary" taxes that has made the NPA
complicit with the big loggers in the environmental rape of the
Sierra Madre that led to the deaths of over 5,000 people in Real and
Infanta.

Along with feudal landed structures, transnational capitalism, and US
imperialism, leftwing fascism of the CPP variety has, unfortunately,
become one of the basic problems of the Filipino people.

It is because progressives in Akbayan and other organizations have
opted for a pluralist road to change, one based on vigorous
democratic debate and on non-violent means, one that sees opponents
as people to be won over, not eliminated, one that regards different
political traditions as a source of strength rather than as poisons
to fundamentalist purity, that we have become anathema to Mr. Sison.

Mr. Sison and the CPP are fossils stuck in the mud of the 20th
century, with all its tragedies. We in Akbayan and other progressive
organizations have moved on to confront the challenges facing the
Filipino people in the 21st century. That is the real reason we have
been marked out for elimination.

-----------
<URL: http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=22362 >

Communist Party 'hit list' denounced
Akbayan leaders fear for their lives

Updated 00:10am (Mla time) Dec 26, 2004
By Juan Sarmiento
Inquirer News Service

Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the December 26, 2004 issue of the
Philippine Daily Inquirer

INDIVIDUALS and groups listed as "counterrevolutionaries" in a December
issue of the official publication of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP) have denounced the roster as a "hit list."

"We're fair game," Walden Bello, a University of the Philippines professor
who is on the CPP list, told Inquirer editors. "We don't think this is an
arbitrary listing."

In an open letter to CPP founder Jose Maria Sison on the 36th anniversary
of the CPP today, Bello and Akbayan Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales said: "The
party which you founded 36 years ago views them as ideological and
political enemies -- class enemies, as can be 'gleaned from their
international links."'

In its Dec. 7 issue, the Ang Bayan identified the "counterrevolutionaries"
in a diagram of individuals and organizations and their links to so-called
Trotskyites and social democrats abroad. The diagram was prepared by the
CPP's International Department.
"Some personalities involved with some of these groups are already dead,
like Popoy Lagman, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara. Lagman, reportedly
-- and the latter two admittedly -- in the hands of your armed wing, the
New People's Army. Another person on the list, Ricardo Reyes, is already
in your order of battle," Bello and Rosales said.

"Outside of Ric Reyes who currently chairs Akbayan, we, Walden Bello,
chair emeritus of Akbayan and Loretta Ann P. Rosales, first Akbayan
representative, are also among the individuals listed. Does this mean you
intend to kill us one by one?" the two said.

Lagman and Tabara were assassinated on Feb. 6, 2001, and on Sept. 26,
2004, respectively. Ang Bayan identified Lagman as someone from the PMP
[Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino], BMP [Bukluran ng Mangagagawang
Pilipino] and Sanlakas, and Tabara was identified with RPM
[Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Mangagawa]-Pilipinas.

Besides Bello, Boy Morales and Gani Serrano were tagged as Pop Dem
(popular democrats) and part of IPD (Institute for Popular Democracy);
Rosales and Reyes of Padayon; Manjette Lopez and Liddy Nakpil of PPD
(Partido Proletaryo Demokratiko); Sony Melencio of SPP [Socialist Party of
the Philippines]; Nilo de la Cruz of RPM/RPA [Revolutionary Proletariat
Army]-ABB [Alex Boncayao Brigade]; Ike de los Reyes of RPM-Mindanao; and
Tito de la Cruz and Caridad Pascual of MLPP [Marxist-Leninist Party of the
Philippines] and RHB [Rebolusyonaryong Hukbong Bayan].

"These are the people who leftÃÂÃâÂÃÂÂ the CPP and its allied
organizations,
Bello said when he and Rosales visited the Inquirer on Dec. 15.

CPP spokesperson Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal strongly denied the existence
of an "NPA hit list."

Figment of imagination

"That supposed NPA [New PeopleÃÂÃâÂÃâÂs Army] hit list was only a
product of the
malicious figment of imagination of military propagandists. It only aims
to besmirch the popular image of the Red fighters from among the masses,"
Rosal said in a mobile-phone interview when asked about the Ang Bayan
diagram.

Rosal said the perennial resurrection of the alleged NPA "hit list" was
part of the demolition job against the NPA being orchestrated by the
military.

He scoffed at some former members of the revolutionary movement, who,
according to him, were spreading wild tales on their supposed inclusion on
the NPA list of people targeted for assassination.

"Probably, they are now in fear because they have committed crimes against
the people and the revolutionary movement," Rosal said. "If they have
nothing to fear, then why live in fear?"

Rosal said other people also left the movement, "but since they have done
nothing against the movement, they just go on with their lives."

He reiterated that the NPA had nothing to do with the murder of Lagman.
"Popoy was killed by his former comrades in the ABB [the former urban unit
of the NPA] because of his treachery when he turned himself as partner of
Ping [Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former chief of the Philippine National
Police] and Erap [former President Joseph Estrada]," Rosal said.

Deep sadness, anger

Activist Liddy Nakpil is also worried of the possible implications of the
Ang Bayan diagram.

She said she knew what it means to be labeled "counterrevolutionary" by
the CPP.

"Several former leaders accused of being counterrevolutionaries and agents
of the state have been killed by the CPP while others are harassed and
pursued," Nakpil said in a statement. ÃÂÃâÂÃâBut former colleagues are
not the
only targets-organizers and activists from people's organizations and
movements not within the sphere of influence of the CPP are also being
threatened and attacked.ÃÂÃâÂÃÂÂ

She added: "Many of us who have given our youth and much of the best years
of our lives in advancing the national democratic struggle, many of us
whose loved ones have died for that struggle, and those of us who dare
follow a different path toward revolutionary change witness what the CPP
leadership is doing with a mixture of deep sadness, frustration and anger.
They are squandering whatever gains and successes achieved in all these
decades of struggle."

Nakpil, widow of Lean Alejandro, secretary general of the Bagong Alyansang
Makabayan when he was assassinated on Sept. 19, 1987, allegedly by
government agents, said the CPP accusations and actions "have caused loss
of lives and danger to individuals, as well as terrible harm to the
socialist cause."

Erroneous information

Nakpil said the diagram and an accompanying short article were another
pathetic attempt of the CPP to discredit Philippine progressive groups in
its effort to project itself as the only true revolutionary movement.

"The article and diagram are based on patently erroneous information,
outrageously biased judgments, antiquated analysis and sheer
malice,ÃÂÃâÂÃÂÂ she
said. ÃÂÃâÂÃâMore than pathetic, this is tragic for a movement claiming
itself
scientific and revolutionary and seeking to be a governing force."

Bello and Rosales said they were puzzled and a little annoyed because
"while we were all once national democrats, our movement was part of a
much broader based anti-dictatorship united front that sought the end of
one-man rule through the ouster of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

They noted that social democrats and Trotskyites marched side by side with
national democrats, church groups and ordinary citizens who loved the
country and wanted an end to the dictatorship. "In the international
arena, our combined ranks actively led in strengthening the social
movements against the ill effects of globalization on struggling economies
of the Third World."

Rosales chairs the committee on human rights in the House of
Representatives, while Bello is the recipient of the Right Livelihood
Award, also known as the Alternative Noble Prize.

"Against which standards does the national democratic movement judge such
efforts as counterrevolutionary?" they asked Sison, who is based in
Utrecth, The Netherlands.

Universal human rights

Bello and Rosales said Sison would once again stand pat on his claim that
he was waging an armed and just war in defense of the Filipino people's
national and democratic interests.

"Considering that we are no longer part of your protracted war, does this
make us class enemies and fair game as enemy targets?ÃÂÃâÂÃÂÂ they said
in the
open letter. ÃÂÃâÂÃâIt bothers us that your 36-year-old obsession over
armed
warfare asserts that all other forms of struggle are inherently inferior
and a threat to the primacy of the over-arching goal of a violent upheaval.

"Even more deadly, it is justified to eliminate such a threat since your
concept of revolutionary justice not only excuses but necessitates it."

The Philippine Left is a much, much bigger community than the CPP wants it
to be, Bello and Rosales said.

"We want to impart upon Sison that if the party he founded is truly
interested in upholding universal human rights, it has to reassess its
role in the progressive movement -- as an agent of discourse and peaceful
co-existence, not as a fascist harbinger of violence, hatred and murder,"
they said.

Rosales earlier told Inquirer editors that the CPP was angry at Akbayan
because the party-list group, which has won three seats in the House, was
taking a role that the CPP thinks it should do alone. "And we're doing it
without guns," she said.

With a report form Delfin T. Mallari Jr., PDI Southern Luzon Bureau