Young NPA fighter in Luzon reunites with family in Eastern Samar

From the Philippine News Agency (Jan 6, 2020): Young NPA fighter in Luzon reunites with family in Eastern Samar (By Sarwell Meniano)

REUNITED. Sherry Mae Ibao (center) is flanked by her parents Rodrigo and Teresita during a press briefing in Manaoag, Pangasinan on Tuesday (Jan. 5, 2021). After five years of fighting government forces in Northern Luzon, the young recruit of the New People’s Army is finally back with her family who hails from Eastern Samar. (Screengrab from NTF-ELCAC)

After five years of fighting government forces in Northern Luzon, a young recruit of the New People’s Army (NPA) is finally back in the arms of her family who hails from Eastern Samar.

Tired of empty promises, Sherry Mae Ibao, 27, said she yielded to authorities, letting go of the communist ideology she had embraced since she was a freshman student of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in 2011.

“I’ve been contemplating surrender in the past three years. It was late last year that I got a chance to leave the organization when I asked for maternity leave since I’m already six months pregnant,” Ibao said in a press briefing at the Philippine Army 702nd Infantry Brigade headquarters in Manaoag, Pangasinan on Tuesday afternoon.

She told reporters it was a senseless five-year armed struggle since it has not helped uplift the lives of poor Filipinos.

Sherry Mae said she realized that there are peaceful and more productive means to call for change.

“In the past five years, I missed my family, especially during the time when I get tired. Recently, I feared for my life and concern for my baby’s future since there have been frequent encounters between soldiers and the NPA,” she added.

When she was three months pregnant last September, Sherry Mae asked for leave but NPA leaders did not grant her request until December.

She spent her maternity leave at the house of a member of the NPA’s legal front in Bangued, Abra until she got the chance to regularly communicate with her family.

Her mother, Teresita, 60, thanked Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone, Borongan City Mayor Jose Ivan Dayan Agda, and the Philippine Army for making her daughter’s surrender possible.

“I could not explain the feeling of joy after my daughter told us that she wanted to come back home last December 28. This is an answer to something that I have prayed for during the nine-day Simbang Gabi last December,” Teresita said.

Aboard a Borongan City government vehicle, Sherry Mae’s parents arrived at the Army camp in Pangasinan on January 3.

Escorted by the military, they picked her up in Bangued, Abra the following day.

Philippine Army 702nd Infantry Brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Audrey Pasia, confirmed that Sherry Mae, known to rebels as Jerry or Laila, was an active NPA member under its Ilocos-Cordillera Regional Committee.

For Sherry Mae’s father, Rodrigo, 59, the officer in charge of the Philippine Coconut Authority’s office in Eastern Samar, her daughter’s decision was the best New Year’s gift to their family.

“We have been longing for her to come back home. The last time we got the chance to see her was in 2018 in a remote area in Santa Lucia, Ilocos Sur. In that brief moment, I realized that my daughter carrying a firearm was already indoctrinated by the NPA,” Rodrigo said in a phone interview Tuesday night.

The family is expected to arrive in Eastern Samar on Wednesday on board a local government vehicle.

Rodrigo never expected that the eldest of his four children would get involved in student activism and insurgency since she was the shy and quiet type of girl.

“She joined the NPA full time just three days after completing (her) Bachelor of Science in History at PUP in 2015 and never returned home. She just called us twice a year using different phone numbers,” he added.

Sherry Mae recounted that it all started when she participated in student activism organized on campus by legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines - NPA in 2011.

Former rebel Rey Christian Sabado said the NPA has been using youth idealism and dynamism to encourage armed rebellion against the government.

“It started when (a) legal front organization recruited us, taking advantage of our desire to make changes in our society,” said Sabado, who was recruited by Sherry Mae during their college days at the PUP.

A former accounting student, he was captured by soldiers in Las Navas, Northern Samar on Oct. 3, 2019 while extorting money from the locals.

The NPA, which has been waging a five-decade armed struggle against the government, is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1126481