"It is sometimes necessary to kill the chicken to scare the monkey". That's how Mao Zedong fobbed off his murder of party leaders who bucked his paranoid rule. This grisly proverb resonates in the Netherlands where police arrested, for murder, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder : Jose Ma. Sison

From Utrecht, the 68-year old Sison "gave orders to murder his former political associates in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar, in 2003 and Arturo Tabara in 2004," the Dutch national prosecutor's office said. Courts in the Hague will now determine whether Sison can be detained further until trial begins.

Kintanar and Tabara, who led a faction that broke away from the Sison's group in the early 1990s, never got a trial. They were rubbed out by the New People's Army assassins. Thus, the US and European Union list CPP and NDF as terrorist organizations.

Sison's allies staged knee-jerk protests. What scholars have tracked is more telling : Since 1992, the CPP adopted assassination as policy. In three major studies, for example, Pierre Rousset of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontiers , documented how this policy caused hundreds of deaths.

"A first set of death sentences were publicly announced," after the split party splintered in 1992, Rousset wrote. Leaders who opposed Sison were condemned: "Ricardo Reyes ( today hunted down), Romulo Kintanar (killed 2003) Benjie de Vera from Mindanao; Arturo Tabara (killed 2004 ); Popoy Lagman (killed 2001) from Manila.

"After Kintanar's assassination. Sison explained sometimes it was necessary to 'kill the chicken to scare the monkey', the study says. During inner party struggles, Mao would kill a lower official to warn higher officials he was fighting. Thus, Hector Mabilangan's murder, in April 1994 "was a warning to Rolly Kintanar and others".

"Killing the chickens to scare the monkey" escalates the threat beyond the Left, Roussett notes. It signals recalcitrant tax sources, pressurized by a financially strapped CPP. This is specially true on costly "permits to campaign" (PTC).

Rousset's latest study is: "The CPP-NPA-NDF "Hit List" - A Preliminary Report."

Individuals and organizations were pinpointed as ""counterrevolutionary," by the party's International Department. Published by Ang Bayan ( February 2004 ), this became in effect a hit list."

"The policy of assassination is turned against the whole independent Left.( in the party's drive) "to impose monopoly of power", it notes. "We are faced with an overall policy of threats, death sentences and killings, deployed by the CPP-NPA-NDF on a national scale, something that no other group is doing".

Progroms preceeded the post-1992 bloodbath : from "Kadena de Amor" ( 1982) in Quezon-Bicol to "Olympia" in Metro Manila (1998-99). In his book "To Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated It's Own," former UP student Robert Francis Garcia gives chilling eye-witness accounts of these executions.

CPP chair Rodolfo Salas admitted to 1,800 pogrom executions in a 2003 Inquirer interview. UP professor Walden Bello claims 700 were executed in purges that netted five government agents. No one knows for sure.

But killings continued under the post 1992 policy - now object of Dutch inquiry. Among the victims were: Stephen Ong, boyfriend of Tabara's daughter; Daniel Batoy, senior RPA-ABB commander and daughter; Lito Bayudang of Nueva Ecija.; Donie Valencia in Bataan , *Akbayan's Florente "Boy" in Agusan del Norte. Quezon province peasant leader Reymundo "Teteng" Tejeno, Conrado Balweg, Cordillera;

At least 16 activists were tarred as "counterrevolutionaries" by the CPP. They can be salvaged anytime. "Charges against "opponents" are fabricated by the CPP-NDF with often no concern for credibility". Ibon Foundation was used to smear Walden Bello.
"The difference between the party's 'hate and hit' lists is blurred", Rousset adds. The 'hate list' is used as a threat. "And one never knows if and when (one) will be transferred by the CPP leadership into the NPA "hit list". People condemned have no possibility to defend themselves. There is no independent due process whatsoever.

Once sentenced, activists can be summarily killed anytime.

Aside from Bello and Francis Garcia, those threatened include :Rep. Etta Rosales, Sixto Carlos, Akbayan's officer; Efren Binalla, farmer-leader, Bondoc Peninsula; Sixto Carlos, Akbayan's officer.; Lidy Nacpil, Jubilee South,.Nathan Quimpo and Manuel Quiambao Pena of Akbayan and . Joel Rocamora, Transnational Institute, IPD (sentenced to death in 1993).

The Dutch crackdown is overdue. Sison and his aging commissars exploited Holland's deep-rooted traditions for human rights into a sanctuary from where they wage "people's war" in the Philippines. No more, says the Hague. Freedom does not vest impunity for murder planned in Holland, even if carried out in other countries.

El que la hace, la paga, the Mexican proverb says. "Murder will out." Thus, coverage of the Netherlands court action will jerk the attention of Filipinos, away from wow-wow-wee pap or political zarzuelas, to the little noticed massacre, by communists of their own, in our midst. We turned deaf to the scream of Kintanar's widow against Sison: "Stop playing God."

After almost four decades "of trying to overthrow the government, what does the New People's Army have to show for it?," asked an Inquirer editorial titled: "The Cannibal Revolution". Filipino communists refuse to consider the obvious. "Have they... condemned themselves to the rubbish bin of history?"

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)