{UAH} Philippine communist rebels announce seven-day truce for peace talks

Robert Atuhairwe,

Here the real battle begins. The Peace Talks are finally on- barring USA interference and right wing and landlord interference.

 I applaud Mr Rodrigo Duterte for the bold steps he has taken. He has freed both Wilma Tiamzon and her husband Benito Tiamzon. These two are iconic figure in the history of Phililipines struggle and in world revolution. A history of the Philippines can never been be complete without giving almost an entire chapter to Wilma Tiamzon, the only woman so far who has been able to climb up to the top leadership of a world revolutionary guerrilla movement. Very few times to do you see women leading an armed movement and Wilma is one of the very few.

 I last met Wilma in a military garrison prison in Manila in July last year. Both her and her husband, then the Head of the Communist New Peoples Army, had been captured in Cebu after nearly 40 years operating in the underground. Wilma Tiamzon was a student activist in 1972 when Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial law in the country. He was violently  opposep by millions of students in a movement called "The First Quarter Storm". Marcos ordered the army to shoot down protesting students and thousands were arrested allover the country. Wilma Tiamzon was from a well-to-do family. She was arrested and detained and badly tortured by Marcos for almost two years. After her release, she disappeared completely from public view, never to be seen again until her arrest nearly 40 years later in Cebu in January last year. In the meantime she had grown a larger than life figure, an icon of the left, and of the women's movement. Wima Tiamzon, an unassuming and dimunitive figure no one would ever imagine is a hardened guerilla fighter is an inspiration to millions of oppressed women all over the world. She is the new Rosa Luxembourg. Many women have sacrificed their lives for the cause, but few have given up their entire lives to a belief that her people will one day be free.

When I met the Philippines government last year, I made it clear to them that no peace talks could proceed without the release of Wilma Tiamzon and her husband Benito.

This is by far the most exciting and challenging time in my life. Everything else pales in comparision. It is a point of no return for the Filipino people. I look back and think about all those good people I met in the jungles and back streets and farms of of the Philippines- people with a burning desire to make life better for their people and to change the world if they can. I hope they will feel proud of what we are trying to do- to achieve the vision they sacrificed their lives for by other means. if we can achieve peace in the Philippines and liberate the peasants, I will retire from politics completely and become a full-time lawyer or law professor.

Bobby

Rodrigo Duterte

President Rodrigo Duterte frees Communist party's top leaders before talks take place in Norway

 Communist rebel leader Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma, hours after they were freed from detention in the Philippines. Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

Agence France-Presse

Saturday 20 August 2016 06.02 BST

Philippine communist guerrillas will observe a seven-day truce from Sunday to bolster upcoming peace talks hosted by Norway, the rebels said, urging the Manila government to also order a ceasefire.

The Communist party of the Philippines made the move following president Rodrigo Duterte's decision to free its top leaders on Friday. They are set to fly to Oslo for negotiations aimed at ending one of Asia's longest insurgencies.

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"We hope that this ceasefire declaration will be reciprocated by the [government] as a show of all-out determination to move forward with peace negotiations," the party said in a statement.

The talks begin on Monday with both sides expressing optimism for reaching a political settlement after 30 years of failed negotiations.

The government estimates the 47-year-old rebellion has claimed 30,000 lives and impoverished vast swathes of the south-east Asian nation.

Norway has acted as an intermediary in the talks. Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino had ended negotiations in 2013 after rejecting the communists' demand that he free all imprisoned guerrillas.

After winning a landslide election victory in May, Duterte declared a unilateral ceasefire last month, but ended it just five days later when a rebel ambush killed a government militia member and wounded four others.

"To further bolster peace negotiations, the [party] and [its armed wing the New People's Army] are also open to discuss the possibility of a longer ceasefire," the rebel statement said.

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However, this would only be possible after the government freed "all political prisoners", it said, referring to 550 guerrillas detained by the government.

The rebel army is believed to have fewer than 4,000 gunmen left, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, when a bloodless "People Power" revolt ended the 20-year dictatorship of the late president Ferdinand Marcos.

But the movement retains support among the poor in rural areas, and its forces regularly kill police or troops while extorting money from local businesses.

Hours after the release of guerrilla chief Benito Tiamzon and his wife in Manila on Friday, police said they had arrested another senior rebel leader, Amelia Pond, in the central city of Cebu.

Pond is to stand trial for two murders as well as attempted murder, a police statement said.

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