The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison, who sparked one of the longest Maoist insurgencies in the world, has died at the age of 83, his party announced on Saturday.
The former university professor died in the Netherlands, where he had lived in exile since the failure of peace negotiations in 1987 when the rebellion, which claimed tens of thousands of lives, was at its peak.
“Sison […] died around 8:40 p.m. (Philippine time) after two weeks of convalescence in a hospital in Utrecht,” the Communist Party of the Philippines said in a statement, without specifying the cause of his death.
“The proletariat and the working people of the Philippines mourn the death of their teacher and their guide,” he added.
The Philippine Ministry of Defense said his death could finally lead to an end to violence in the country, calling Mr Sison the “greatest obstacle” to peace.
“Sison’s death is only (the) symbol of the erosion of the hierarchy” of the communist movement, he said, calling on the last rebels to surrender.
“A new era without Sison opens for the Philippines […]. Now let’s give peace a chance,” the ministry added.
Mr. Sison had sought to overthrow the government of the Philippines to establish a Maoist-style communist regime that would end “American imperialism” in the former American colony.
In 2002, the US State Department labeled the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing as terrorist organizations.
The armed struggle, at work since 1969, developed from the world communist movement and was able to find fertile ground in the Philippines in the glaring inequalities between rich and poor.
The rebellion also saw its ranks strengthen under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986) when legislative power was locked, the press muzzled and thousands of opponents tortured or killed.
In the 1980s, the organization numbered around 26,000 fighters, a number which the military says is now approaching a few thousand.
Since 1986, successive Philippine governments have held peace talks with the communists through their Dutch-based political wing, the National Democratic Front (NDF).
The 2016 election of former president Rodrigo Duterte, a self-proclaimed socialist former student of Mr. Sison, brought a wave of optimism about the peace talks.
But the talks degenerated into threats and recriminations before being interrupted in 2017 by Mr Duterte in 2017, who had called the group a “terrorist organization”, accusing it of killing police and soldiers while negotiations were taking place.
In recent years, the Philippine government has claimed that hundreds of communist rebels have surrendered in exchange for financial assistance and livelihoods.
Deadly clashes continue to take place in different parts of the country, also confronted with groups practicing kidnappings for ransom and Islamist secessionist movements in the South.