The Last Plea

Marocharim distills the essential contradiction which those who use the law in order to overthrow it find themselves. He finds it ironical that Philippine Communist leader Jose Maria Sison, now on trial for murder in the Netherlands for killing his own former subordinates, must now shelter behind the letter of bourgeois law to save his hide. But there's more. He observes:

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Can Joma or his militant supporters trust the due process of law, then? If you spend a quarter century or so fighting the law, you can say a lot about the sorry state of the law. But for the whole theory of the Communist ideology, Joma is in one of those unflattering and uncompromising positions of having to do things well within the bounds of the law: not outside of it, not even at the very margins. Like I said before, you can't talk about Communism without talking about Joma, so this is more than just a murder trial. It is, in my view, a defense of Communism. ...

This is not just Joma's double-murder trial. This is a trial of his revolution.

It's exactly right to say, "this is a trial of his revolution." That's why Ramsey Clark, who defended Saddam, will be there to defend Sison. He knows he's not just defending a man. He's defending a movement. And that's also why the shades of the thousands who Sison has over the years ordered murdered, including Colonel Nick Rowe, will be in silent attendance. This is their final chance at justice. They say every man dies two deaths. The first is physical. But second, and more final, is when they are forgotten by those who claim to love them. Sison has taken the first lives of his victims. The Communist Propaganda machine, by exalting and glorifying Sison; by attempting to exculpate his revolution's acts before the bar of history is bent on inflicting their Second Death. If Sison's murders are given the imprimatur by Western justice those thousands will have died again. Sison's murders will have been justified. We are all the victims have left and I'm not at all sure that we won't fail them.