PH asks EU to revoke Joma’s refugee status

MANILA, Philippines — The government is seeking the revocation by the European Union of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chair Jose Maria Sison’s refugee status.

In an interview aired on Sunday over radio station dzBB, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said that he had spoken with a deputy ambassador of the European Union to ask that Sison’s status as a refugee in the Netherlands be revoked so he could be extradited to the Philippines to face charges filed against him.

Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 32 Judge Thelma Bunyi-Medina ordered last month the arrest of Sison and some 30 others for multiple murder in connection with the 2006 discovery of a mass grave in Inopacan, Leyte.

According to Año, it was a “good development” to bring back Sison and the other communist leaders to jail.

He claimed that the European Union’s response to his request was, so far, positive, adding that the EU assured its cooperation with the government’s efforts. —Jeannette I. Andrade