(Eagle News)–Communist Party of the Philippines founding chair Jose Maria Sison has described as “patently false” the multiple murder charges filed against him over a mass grave found in Inopacan, Leyte.
In a statement posted on his Facebook account after he was ordered arrested by a Manila court, Sison said he was under maximum security detention in 1985, and “as a prisoner, I had no position in the CPP or (New People’s Army) at that time.”
Authorities have said the remains in the grave discovered in 2006 were those of victims of the Communist purge in the 1980s.
He also added the “long drawn” Inopacan case of “walking skeletons” was a “cruel joke at the expense of patriotic and progressive activists.”
He said the bones were “collected” by then-Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon from various cemeteries to “make his legal offensive and persecute the opponents of the Arroyo regime.”
He also refused to “face the music” as the Palace urged him to do, saying he has the “right to refuse surrendering myself to a tyrannical regime that fabricates false charges to persecute its critics and opponents.”
“As a recognized political refugee, I am well protected by the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. There is no way for the Duterte regime to put his hands on me,” he said.
Apart from Sison, over 30 others were ordered arrested by Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 32.
