By VILLAMOR C. VISAYA JR., Philippine Daily Inquirer news correspondent/GMA news stringer/Balitang Hilaga publisher
SANTA MARIA, Isabela-In 2000, former Philippine Collegian managing editor Kerima Lorena Tariman was arrested in Isabela Province and later indicted before the Regional Trial Court in Cabagan town for illegal possession of firearms.
Then a student, she was then integrating with farmers for researches when Army soldiers arrested her on alleged trumped-up charges and allegations that she had an immersion into the rebel movement.She had sustained a minor grenade shrapnel wound when nabbed with a couple of Armalite rifles.
“She was arrested in Isabela while she was having an immersion with farmers and claimed to have been carrying Armalite rifles too heavy for her frail body,” her father Pablo Tariman, cultural writer-columnist, said.
Kerima, a poet and book author ever since she was at the University of the Philippines while studying Philippine Studies degree, then confided that she was repeatedly asked many questions and held at the military camp in Gamu town in Isabela before she can get a lawyer. She also rued why she was presented to the media in handcuffs, slapped with the charge and imprisoned.
Her case in Isabela was dismissed after two years of litigation.
Twenty-one years later, the 42-year-old Kerima was killed in an encounter with 79th Infantry Battalion’s Army soldiers in Silay City, Negros Occidental on August 20, Friday. A fellow rebel named Pabling was also killed.
Her father Pablo said that his daughter had lived a “consistent and fulfilled life he had chosen” which made him proud of her.
He was in Silay City days ago to claim his daughter’s remains at a funeral homes and later let these be cremated and placed at an urn.#
