José María Sison (born February 8, 1939 in Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, Philippines) is a writer and intellectual who reorganized the Communist Party of the Philippines by combining elements of Maoism. Since August 2002, he has been classified as a "person supporting terrorism" by the U.S. and the E.U..

A graduate of the University of the Philippines, in 1959, he studied in Indonesia, before returning to the Philippines to settle as a university professor of literature. In 1964, founded the Kabataang Makabayan or Patriotic Youth. This organization rallied Filipino youth against the Vietnam war, against the Marcos presidency and corrupt politicians.

On December 26, 1968, he formed and chaired the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), an organization founded on Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought, stemming from his experience as a youth leader and labor and land reform activist. This is known as the First Great Rectification movement where Sison and other radical youth criticized the existing Party leadership and failure. The reformed CPP included Maoism with the political line as well as the struggle for a National Democratic two-stage revolution, constituting a National Democratic Revolution through a Protracted Peoples War as its first part, and to be followed by a Socialist Revolution.

After this, the old PKP communist party sought to eliminate and marginalize Sison. However, the reorganized CPP had a larger base and renewed political line that attracted thousands to join its ranks. [citation needed] On March 29, 1969, the CPP organized the New People's Army (NPA), the guerrilla-military wing of the Party, whose insurgencies around the Philippines, particularly in the northern part of the country, persist to this day. The NPA seeks to wage a peasant-worker revolutionary war in the countryside against landlords and foreign companies.

After Martial Law was imposed, Sison was imprisoned and chained to a bed in a solitary cell. His experience was described in Prison & Beyond, a book of poetry released in 1986, which won the Southeast Asia WRITE award for the Philippines.

He went into exile in the Netherlands after Marcos era. This was after he had been released from imprisonment by the government of Corazón Aquino for the sake of "national reconciliation" and for his role in opposing Marcos. The release of Sison was vehemently protested by the military. It is reported that upon his release, Sison and his followers actively sought to discredit the Aquino government in the European media by speaking out on Aquino's human rights violations including the Mendiola Massacre where the military were accused of firing on unarmed peasants in Manila killing 17.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo joined United States President George W. Bush, in using the event as a means of labeling Sison a terrorist. Sison's asylum status went into question as a result of the move and placed him in jeopardy of not having a viable home.

He is currently Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. Since 1987, Sison has resided in the Netherlands where he is seeking asylum as a political refugee. A 2004 court ruling by the European Union endangers the residency status of Sison in Europe and he is expected to be expelled.