Panelo to Sison: No arrests if peace talks held in PHL

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo on Tuesday said Jose Maria Sison and other negotiators of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines will not be arrested should the peace negotiations resume in the country.

Panelo gave the assurance after Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said in a television interview on Monday that they could not come “under the control and surveillance of the military.”

“If you are really sincere, it doesn’t matter where the venue is to hold the talks. Certainly there will be no arrests,” Panelo said at a news conference in Malacañang.

In August, Sison and more than 30 others were ordered arrested by a Manila court for the 2006 discovery of a mass grave in Inopacan, Leyte that purportedly contained the bones of victims of the alleged purging by the New People's Army in the 1980s.

Sison fled to Europe soon after peace talks with the government of then-President Corazon Aquino failed in 1987 and has stayed in The Netherlands since, while the country's longest running insurgency continued to claim thousands of lives amid fighting with government troops.

Last week, Duterte ordered Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to fly to The Netherlands to talk to Sison, months after the President announced the “permanent termination” of the peace talks.

Both the police and military expressed support to the President’s decision with the Armed Forces of the Philippines saying it was committed to “all-out peace that shall embody the aspirations of our people who have long been yearning for it.”

But earlier in the day, Sison expressed belief that the Duterte administration is not really interested with resuming peace talks with the communists.

In a statement, Sison said the government’s precondition that the peace talks should be done in the Philippines and the supposed rejection of the proposal of goodwill measures of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) are signs that the government was just finding further pretext to continue its attacks against the communists.  — RSJ, GMA News