PRESIDENTIAL communication undersecretary and National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) spokesperson, Ma. Lorraine Badoy, decried the ongoing attempt by front organizations of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) to “glorify” one of its leading cadres in Negros Island who was killed in an encounter last August 20, 2021 in Silay City, Negros Occidental, which also orphaned the family of a soldier from the 79th Infantry Battalion, Philippine Army.
In a statement on August 23, 2021, Badoy said that Kerima Tariman was a communist terrorist “combatant” who was killed in a “legitimate encounter.”
The initial field reports reaching higher Army command said that Tariman, a former student at the Philippine University—Diliman campus, was killed along with another terrorist, one ‘Ka Pabling’ and Pfc. Christopher Alada.
Alada, a father of two, according to a report by the Philippine News Agency (PNA), died in the 10-minute clash that took place near Hacienda Raymunda, Bgy. Kapitan Ramon, Silay City.
The military said the terrorists, numbering around 10 persons, were “remnants” of the Northern Negros Front of the New Peoples’ Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
As soon as the NPA’s Apolinario Gatmaitan Command in Negros confirmed the identity of Tariman, her glorification as a “revolutionary martyr” and a “poet” was immediately launched by CPP front organizations to downplay her true identity as an armed terrorist, Badoy noted.
“Her comrades at the CPP NPA NDF and their mouthpieces in media have described her as the ‘former managing editor of the Philippine Collegian,’” Badoy said.
“She’s also been romantically called a ‘poet’ and a ‘writer.’
“And indeed, she may have been all these in the short violent life she chose to live.
“But while she was all these, Kerima was also a terrorist of the CPP NPA NDF—someone who, like her comrades in that terrorist organization, deluded herself into thinking she was ‘champion of the people’ while at the same time causing untold grief and suffering on the Filipino people—starting with the deceptive recruitment into the CPP NPA NDF of various UP Diliman students,” Badoy pointed out.
She also noted that Tariman, who goes by the alias ‘Ka Ella,’ was an official of the Regional Peasant Bureau of the CPP in Negros Island, and not the ‘romantic poet,’ ‘artist and intellectual’ the CPP front groups are now trying to picture her.
“Kerima goaded children with such bright promise to turn their backs on their dreams, shun and abandon their families, then she led them down the road to perdition where they would be so filled with hate towards government that the only solution for societal ills Kerima whispered to them was to take up arms and be violent extremists
“Truth of the matter is, Kerima, like all recruiters of the CPP NPA NDF, wanted the children she deceptively recruited to die,” Badoy stressed.
“(Tariman) was a ruthless and relentless terrorist who made sure the poor remained stuck in extreme poverty forever and in their short lives, she gave them untold pain and suffering and brought this country much grief and destruction,” Badoy said.