Nurses, maids and migrant workers in B.C. slam Canada's decision to blacklist supporters of communist guerrillas in the Philippines.

By Asian Pacific News Service

The RCMP and Canadian spies are tracking the fundraising activities of several B.C.-based Filipino-Canadian associations to determine if they are pumping money to communist rebels in the Philippines.

The groups, many of which use a office in East Vancouver, have been under watch for sometime but police sources said the 'hunt' is going into high gear now after Ottawa blacklisted the National Democratic Front (NDF) and its affiliated organisations in Canada.

"We are looking at a variety of issues pertaining to fund raising by the Filipino groups, looking at bank accounts and the extensive remittance system used by the migrant workers to send money home," said a government source in a telephone interview with the Asian Pacific Post from Ottawa.

"There is indication of money from Canada going to support the NDF, it's political wing the Communist Party of the Philippines and the armed wing the New People's Army," he said.

"In some cases money earned in Canada go to the so called revolutionary taxes imposed by the communist guerrillas."

Among the groups that can expect covert and overt scrutiny of their activities in B.C. are the British Columbia Committee for Human Rights of the Philippines, the Filipino Nurses Support Group, the Philippine Women Centre of British Columbia, which gets some taxpayer assistance, SIKLAB (Overseas Filipino workers organisation) and Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance-Vancouver.

The leadership and membership of these groups are ardent supporters of Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the CPP or the Communist Party of the Philippines, who now lives in self-exile in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Canada joined the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands last week to blacklist Sison's group, freeze its assets and those of its affiliated organisations and labelled Sison as a 'terrorist'.

The freeze order was issued by the Canadian government on Aug. 29 and includes a prohibition on fund-raising activities or mobilisation of support for the terrorist group.

On Aug. 9, the United States placed the CPP and its army on its foreign terror list, making it illegal for Americans or U.S. entities to give material support to them.

It also required U.S. banks to block assets held by the rebels, and banned them and their families from American soil.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US government had decided on the 'terrorist' designation of the NDF-CPP-NPA coalition after an "exhaustive review" of the group's violent activities.

The group has killed, injured or kidnapped numerous Filipinos, including government officials, he said.

In a joint statement, the B.C.-based Filipino-Canadian groups condemned the move to blacklist Sison describing it as a 'U.S.-led witch-hunt to suppress legitimate political activities and dissent.'

"Now, with the recent announcement that Canada has also included the CPP and NPA on its list of foreign 'terrorists', we are extremely disconcerted and anxious as this move only adds fuel to the anti-immigrant hysteria that has intensified post-September 11th," the statement said.

"The U.S. has set its military might on the legitimate aspirations of the Filipino people for genuine peace, democracy, and national freedom."

Members of the Filipino-Canadian groups held a rally this week to 'defend the rights' of Sison outside the Dutch Consulate on Howe Street in Vancouver.

Protestors said since the original deployment of 6,000 U.S. combat troops and Special Forces in the Philippines more and more soldiers have been entering their homeland supposedly to help Manila quell the bandit group, the Abu Sayaff.

The Abu Sayaff, has direct connections with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida.

"As Filipinos in Canada and human rights advocates, we have been campaigning in solidarity with the broad masses of the Filipino people to have the U.S. military withdraw from the Philippines immediately.

However, despite the obvious fact that there is little left of the Abu Sayaff, the U.S. military still continues to participate in combat, but, they are no longer engaging in battle with the Abu Sayaff. Now, the U.S. has set its military might on the legitimate aspirations of the Filipino people for genuine peace, democracy, and national freedom," the protestors declared in a statement.

The decision to blacklist the Filipino groups was announced less than two weeks after Sison said communist guerrillas must execute new kinds of special operations like destroying power transmission lines and towers in the Philippines.

Speaking from his base in the Netherlands, Sison said the freeze orders are "cruel" and would not have an appreciable impact on the communist rebellion in the Philippines.

Sison, 64, has been living in the Netherlands for more than a decade. He fled the Philippines in the late 1980s during the term of former President Corazon Aquino, who set him and scores of political detainees free after the people power uprising in February 1986.

Prior to that Sison was jailed by dictator Ferdinand Marcos for nine years.

The Dutch internal service has been watching Sison since 1992 and alleges he is still the leader of rebel forces responsible for hundreds of deaths in the Philippines every year, according to news reports in Manila.

The Philippine government maintains that Sison and some 30 other communist leaders who are living in Utrecht have been raising funds for the bloody communist rebellion from European communist groups.

The government also claims the communists are raising funds through extortion and other illegal activities in the Philippines and earned about P549 million (C$16.5 million) from 1999 to 2002.

Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez has said government intelligence agents had verified that the CPP-NPA and the NDF have amassed funds from their extortion activities disguised as "revolutionary taxes."

Golez said intelligence reports have indicated that in 1999, the CPP-NPA accumulated P108 million (C$3.3 million), P93 million (C$2.8 million) in 2000, P98 million (C$2.9 million) in 2001 and P15 (C$450,000) million so far this year.

But Sison rejected suggestions that he, the CPP, the NDF, or the NPA and exiled communist leaders have assets overseas, saying they do "not maintain any amount of money in the US and elsewhere."

The move by Ottawa to blacklist Sison and his affiliates was delivered by Canadian Ambassador Robert Collete to Filipino Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople last week.

"The Philippine government welcomes this decision of the Canadian government very warmly," said Ople.

Collete also informed Ople of Ottawa's donation of some C$1 million worth of medicine and hospital equipment which will be delivered in November to six hospitals in Basilan and Sulu.

The Canadian embassy issues an average of 25,000 visas to Filipinos every year and the Philippines hosts some 10,000 Canadian nationals, many of whom are of Filipino descent.