Kerima Lorena Tariman Acosta, 42, a New People’s Army leader slain in an encounter with government soldiers in Silay City, Negros Occidental, was an editor and poet, her father Pablo Tariman said Saturday, August 21.
She was also described by her comrades as a revolutionary artist.
“I am proud of my daughter. She was consistent all the way. I like the way she lived her life. In poetry and commitment. I was ready for this death years back. When it happened, it was not surprising. I am proud of her,” he told DIGICAST NEGROS.
Acosta was managing editor of the Philippine Collegian, the student publication of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, when a couple of years before graduation, she disappeared.
She was soon found in the jungles of Isabela figuring in an armed encounter with military troops who then claimed to have found several Armalite rifles in her possession, Tariman, who is a writer for national newspapers, said.
Tariman said he learned of his daughter’s death from a friend of hers.
“When I asked for confirmation, a friend of Kerima in Silay described a photo taken at the encounter site. I asked her to describe how she looked and I’m certain she was my daughter. The person who described the photo also confirmed that is was her, “ he said.
“I was shown a photo of her in the encounter site. She was alive with just one bullet wound in her hands but the military finished her off, “ Tariman said.
However, Maj. Cenon Pancito III, spokesperson of the Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said “she was found during clearing operations near the encounter site and may have died due to loss of blood. Her shoulder had been hit by bullets and was nearly severed”.
Tariman, who is married to Merlita Lorena Tariman, said Kerima was born on May 29, 1979, in Legaspi City.
He said his daughter took up Philippines Studies at UP Diliman where she met her husband Ericson Acosta, with whom she has an 18-year-old son. He is now a freshman BS Math student at UP.
She had finished high school at the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) where she graduated salutatorian in 1996. She was a PHSA scholar in creative writing, he said.
Tariman said his daughter published her first collection of poetry at age 16, and won poetry competitions at the University of the Philippines. Her poems also appeared in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Manila Chronicle and Diyaryo Filipino, among others.
A poetry fellow of the UP National Writers Workshop. Her poems and stories appeared in anthologies published by UP Creative Writing Center, he added
His daughter joined the rebel movement in 2000. She was detained in Ilagan, Isabela, for a case of illegal possession of firearms that was dismissed in 2001.
“The endless bad governance and rampant corruption in government, widespread killings in the countryside” drove his daughter to join the rebel movement, Tariman said.
“The first time I went to the countryside to integrate with farmers, government troopers tried to show me first-hand how fascism, counter-insurgency and psychological warfare work. As if to make sure I don’t forget, they gave me a minor grenade shrapnel wound, and a major, lingering fear of any man with a golden wristwatch who’d seem to loiter in public places to watch me,” Kerima wrote from IIigan in 2001, her father said.
Tariman said he only learned that his daughter was in Negros two years ago.
He is coming to Negros this week to claim her remains, Tariman said.*