At 79, I must still confront political persecution
At 79, I must still confront political persecution
Today I turned 79 years old.
Nothing remarkable about that, except that at my age I’m still being subjected to public political persecution by the state authorities. And this has been my situation, on and off, off and on, for the past 42 years. Yes, for more than half of my life.
Four years ago I already wrote about this. However, I’m taking up the matter again to call attention to what the Duterte government is doing: sustaining the political persecution – affecting not only myself but more than 600 other persons – with a crude but vicious twist. I refer to the Department of Justice “terror list” and the threat it imposes on the safety and security of those whose names are in it, or may be added to it.
The list is contained in a petition for proscription, filed by the Department of Justice at the Regional Trial Court Branch 19 in Manila on February 23, asking the court to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army as terrorist organizations. My name is among the alleged “known officers” of the two revolutionary organizations with known addresses, through whom “respondents CPP and NPA… may be served with summons and other processes” of the court. But the summons that the court sheriff handed to me was for me to answer the allegations in the DoJ petition within 15 days.
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