NDF asks Dutch gov’t to help recover seized files

The National Democratic Front (NDF) said Friday it has asked the Dutch government to help recover files confiscated by Dutch police when authorities arrested communist leader Jose Ma. Sison last August 28. NDF monitoring committee chairman Fidel Agcaoili wrote the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting its assistance to recover the files and records the Dutch police confiscated when they raided the NDF office. The NDF also said it opted to inform the Royal Norwegian government (RNG) of what happened because it stands as the Third Party Facilitator in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. "RNG has been the main supporter of the work of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) of which the NDFP-MC is a part," Luis Jalandoni said in a statement on the Communist Party of the Philippines website (www.philippinerevolution.net). “It is in the interest of the RNG to ensure that the work of the NDFP-MC is not impeded by actions of foreign governments that are attempting to force the NDFP to capitulate across the negotiating table through relentless persecution of Sison." Dutch police raided the NDF office as well as the houses of Jalandoni and Coni Ledesma, NDFP negotiating panel chairman and member; Juliet de Lima, panel member; Dan Borjal, political consultant; Ruth de Leon, head panel secretariat; and Aldo Gonzalez and Joselito Baleva, volunteers in the NDFP International Office. Jalandoni claimed they were brusquely interrogated and forbidden from moving around their homes while the rest of the premises were being ransacked. Ledesma was even taken to the police station for questioning. All computers, laptops, external disks, USB sticks, compact discs, diskettes, cameras and MP3 players were seized, along with documents including Jalandoni’s complete files on the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations from 1986 to the end of 2004. Agcaoili said that the room that he uses whenever he is in The Netherlands was also broken into, ransacked, and its contents pillaged. Included in the confiscated documents were the complete set of complaint forms submitted to the JMC against the NDFP and the GRP, as well as written communications between the NDFP-MC and the NDFP Joint Secretariat (JS), and documents of the NDFP-MC. A box of diskettes and CDs containing documents pertaining to the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and the work of the JMC were also taken. “These actions of the Dutch police have greatly disrupted the operations of the NDFP-MC, and have caused great inconvenience in our work, not to mention compromising efforts to secure justice for the thousands of human rights victims who have placed their trust in the mechanism of the NDFP-MC for the redress of their grievances," he said. Agcaoili maintained that all the seized digital files, documents and papers have no connection whatsoever to the charge against Sison. “Sison himself was released last September 13 after the Dutch District Court in The Hague declared that there was no sufficient and credible evidence connecting him to the alleged murders in the Philippines," he said. - GMANews.TV