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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-25/jose-maria-sison-1986.avif" alt="Jose Maria Sison" loading="lazy"/>
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(Sison on release from prison flashes the Laban sign of the Aquino campaign (Sunday Times Magazine, March 16, 1986))
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In the 1960s he became active in progressive politics - co‑founding the activist youth group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabataang_Makabayan" class="news-link-ext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Kabataang Makabayan</a> in 1964 to oppose U.S. Imperialism, the Marcos Regime, and Feudalism. In December 1968, Sison led a breakaway faction of the old Communist Party of the Philippines to re-establish a new CPP on a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist platform. On March 29, 1969, together with Huk guerrilla leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernabe_Buscayno" class="news-link-ext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Bernabe Buscayno</a>, Sison organized the New People's Army (NPA) as the CPP's guerrilla army in the rural Philippines.



Sison's ideology was a Filipino adaptation of Maoism. He argued that the Philippines needed a two-stage "national democratic" revolution: first to overthrow foreign domination and local feudalism (the "national-democratic" stage), and only then to pursue socialist transformation. He and his comrades criticized the older, pro-Soviet Communist Party as "revisionist", and championed Mao's mass-oriented guerrilla strategy. Under the CPP line, peasants and workers were to wage a protracted people's war from the countryside, gradually encircling the cities. Sison promoted these ideas in key writings: for example, his 1968 manifesto <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/philippines/cpp/guerrero/1970/psr.htm" class="news-link-ext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Philippine Society and Revolution</a> (under the pseudonym Amado Guerrero) and later works like Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism: A Primer (written in prison and smuggled out by his wife).


By the 1970s the CPP-NPA insurgency grew rapidly. Sison's CPP saw military rule under President <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/595/today-in-philippine-history-september-11-1917-ferdinand-e-marcos-was-born-in-sarrat-ilocos-norte" class="news_link">Ferdinand E. Marcos</a> (declared in 1972) as proof of the need for armed struggle. In fact, Marcos cited the Maoist threat as a <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/627/today-in-philippine-history-on-september-21-1972-president-ferdinand-e-marcos-placed-the-philippines-under-martial-law" class="news_link">reason for imposing Martial Law</a>. The guerrilla movement expanded through the 1970s and early 1980s, drawing thousands of peasant recruits. The conflict became one of the world's longest-running insurgencies; estimates put the total killed on all sides over 40,000. At its height the NPA had on the order of 20,000-25,000 fighters operating in many provinces. By the 1990s and 2000s, internal splits and intensified military offensives had shrunk the NPA's ranks to a few thousand.





Sison himself became a target of the Marcos regime. He was arrested on November 8, 1977 and spent nearly nine years in prison - much of it in solitary confinement. Even behind bars he continued to produce ideological writings: his wife smuggled out texts like Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism (1982), which helped spread his ideas. After Marcos was ousted by the <a href="https://kahimyang.com/articles/2981/the-people-power-revolution-a-turning-point-in-philippine-history" class="news_link">1986 People Power Revolution</a>, new President <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/897/today-in-philippine-history-january-25-1933-cory-aquino-was-born-in-manila" class="news_link">Corazon Aquino</a> released Sison on March 5, 1986 as part of a reconciliation initiative. Sison briefly returned to academia and politics in the Philippines - teaching at the University of the Philippines and publicly criticizing abuses by Aquino's government (such as the <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/general-blogs/1732/the-mendiola-massacre-of-january-22-1987-under-the-administration-of-president-corazon-aquino" class="news_link">1987 Mendiola massacre</a>). In late 1986-87 he embarked on a world lecture tour and moved to the Netherlands. His Philippine passport had been revoked and subversion charges filed against him.


From the late 1980s until his death, Sison lived in self-imposed exile in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He became the chief political adviser for the CPP's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Front_of_the_Philippines" class="news_link" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">National Democratic Front</a> in peace negotiations with Manila. In the Netherlands Sison faced legal challenges: in 2007 Dutch authorities briefly arrested him on Philippine murder charges (for the killings of some activists), but he was released when a court found insufficient evidence. His supporters protested that the cases had already been dismissed in the Philippines. A European Court eventually removed him from a 2002 EU terrorist blacklist for procedural reasons. Sison continued to write and speak on communist theory up to 2022. He died peacefully on December 16, 2022 in a Utrecht hospital at age 83, reportedly of heart failure after a several-week illness.

Jose Maria "Joma" Sison: Life, Ideology, and Impact