Jose Maria Sison, born on this day in 1939, was a revolutionary Filipino writer who founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), which fought for decades against the Marcos dictatorship.

Born in Cabugao to a prominent landowning family, Sison established the CPP in 1968 while functioning as a student activist. After he met Bernabé Buscayno, another former activist who had served in the left-wing Huk Rebellion, they founded the armed wing of the CPP, the NPA. Together, they are referred to as the CPP-NPA.

In 1970, Sison outlined the CPP-NPA's guiding principles in a book called "Philippine Society and Revolution", identifying the Philippines' three major problems as bureaucrat capitalism, feudalism, and U.S. imperialism and advocating the Maoist concept of a protracted people's war to effect change in Filipino society.

That same year, the Philippine government, led by dictator Ferdinand Marcos, conducted a large military offensive against the CPP-NPA, decimating its ranks.

The CPP-NPA waged a campaign of guerilla warfare against the Marcos government for decades, and Sison continued to author various texts detailing the theory and practice of the CPP-NPA. In 1976, Buscayno was captured by the state, and Sison himself was captured the following year.

In 1986, following the People Power Revolution and election of Corazon Aquino, Sison and Buscayno were released. Sison found political refuge in The Netherlands, where he resides today.

Since August 2002, Sison has been classified by the United States as a "person supporting terrorism". In 2009, the European Union de-listed him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze his assets.

"The Filipino communists and masses are confident of winning revolutionary victory because of the ever-worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system as well as that of the world capitalist system. They consider the Philippine revolution as part of the world proletarian revolution and hope that in the coming years and decades the revolutionary struggles will spread and intensify on an unprecedented scale in all continents."

- Jose Maria Sison