MANILA, Philippines—Her resolve to lead a new life and fix shattered family ties started with a broken bone.

Rose Ann Gumanoy, 21, joined the communist New People’s Army before finishing high school to avenge the death of her father, Eddie, a peasant leader killed allegedly by government troops in 2003.

But her revulsion of the military slowly turned into something less spiteful after she was gravely wounded in a clash with the 16th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in General Nakar town, Quezon province, eight months ago.

Still nursing a fractured bone in her left arm in quarters at Fort Bonifacio, Rose Ann now wants to start over again.

It was time, she said, to abandon the M-16 rifle that kept her company in the bowels of Quezon for five years and finish high school, reunite with her mother and six siblings, and stop the cycle of revenge.

“I thought back then that every time a bullet from my gun hit a soldier, I’m bringing down the number of the people who killed my father,” said Rose Ann in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

Cycle of revenge

“I think this is no longer the answer—to continue taking up arms because it will be endless ... as the cycle of revenge just goes on,” she said.

But she also hoped that the government would fulfill its promise to help people like her discover a bright future.

“I want to be able to prove to myself that I did the right thing and that the new life the government has been pitching at us is not a sham but a reality,” she said.

Own volition

For some, Rose Ann is among the rebel returnees brainwashed by the military to abandon their convictions. But her change of heart is of her own volition, she firmly said.

Earlier, the human rights group Karapatan reported that Rose Ann and her 18-year-old sister, Fatima, were abducted by state agents after failing to meet with their mother, Maria, at a mall in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, in July.

Side of story

But Rose Ann repeatedly disputed this, giving her side of the story.

During the encounter that left three suspected NPA fighters dead, an M-14 bullet hit her left arm, breaking a bone. The fracture has yet to heal completely.

Bleeding heavily, she was immediately whisked off by the Army via a helicopter to the AFP Medical Center in Quezon City, where she stayed for a whole month to recuperate.

In the hands of men whom she believed had killed her father, she felt rage and fear. She felt she was going to get killed or violated anytime soon, too, Rose Ann said.

Airlifted

“We have been warned that soldiers will kill or rape us once we are arrested. So when they airlifted me, I was angry. I was ready to sacrifice myself for the movement by going straight to jail,” she said.

Familiar with Rose Ann’s story, Lt. Col. Leopoldo Galon Jr., 7th Civil Relations Group commander, recalled in an article sent to the Inquirer how the incensed woman showed her disgust at and distrust of the military.

She refused to take her prescriptions and ripped the IVs from her arm, thinking that she was being drugged to death, Galon recalled.

Mother joined rallies

While she remained confined at the hospital with Fatima, who had measles, her mother regularly staged rallies outside with human rights advocates, urging the military to turn the girls over to her.

“But when I was discharged from the hospital and was jailed for nine days, she [did not visit me],” Rose Ann pointed out sadly. She has been charged with rebellion before a lower court in Quezon over allegedly seditious documents seized following the encounter.

Her body weak and her wound still raw, she found the maternal care she needed among her fellow inmates, who took turns to feed and bathe her and clean her wounds, Rose Ann said.

No to armed struggle

She was released from the Lucena prison after Karapatan posted her bail. She was eventually turned over to a Karapatan custodian, whom she accused of deliberately not taking her to court hearings.

“What they wanted me to do was to get better so I can return to the armed struggle,” she said.

“But I realized that I don’t want that life anymore. What if I die in the next encounter? What if my death would push another one of my siblings to the mountains and end up like me?”

Fleeing Karapatan

With these in mind, she fled from the Karapatan safe house with her younger sister and sought the help of soldiers she somehow befriended during her stay at the military hospital.

It was on July 16 at the Court of Appeals that Rose Ann last saw her mother—defeated and tearful. It was on that fateful day, before three magistrates, that Fatima chose to go with her instead of their mother.

The appellate court dismissed the habeas corpus petition filed by the mother to free Fatima after learning that the latter was not being held against her will and had voluntarily gone with her sister.

“I might end up in the mountains if I went with my mother and besides, I want to get to know my sister better because she was never around at home. I also want to find out for myself if the military really is a ‘berdugo’ (butcher),” Fatima said.

Memories of endless travels

With a peasant leader for a father, who roused and mobilized farmers and other rural workers to push for genuine land reform, Rose Ann could now only muster childhood memories of endless travels from one town to another in the Southern Tagalog region.

“It was the revolution that kept our family apart,” she pointed out.

When her father was murdered along with human rights advocate Eden Marcellana in April 2003 in Oriental Mindoro, she left school to join the underground movement.

Eddie was the former chair of the peasant group Kasama-TK (Kasapian ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan, Federation of Farmers’ Associations in Southern Tagalog).

Tears for murdered father

“When he died, I couldn’t think of any means to get revenge but to bear arms. I didn’t think about my future,” she recalled, tears welling up in her eyes.

Recollections about the slain father still moved the young woman to tears, one reason she cited for refusing to talk much about him.

She admitted though that while in the movement, there were moments when she wanted to return to normal life. These were the times when thoughts of her mother and siblings back home would haunt her, she said.

But compatriots always reminded her that to leave meant betraying her father’s principles, she recalled.

Like normal life

While waiting for her fractured bone to fully recover, she has temporarily settled with her sister inside an Army camp in Taguig City, where lodging has been offered for free.

The daily grind in her little military abode was the closest thing to a normal life she could hope for, in the meantime—cooking their own meals, watching TV in the afternoons, making a quick trip to the mall to buy personal needs and reading textbooks to prepare for schooling.

Equivalency tests

Rose Ann said she and her sister would soon take the government-administered accreditation and equivalency tests so that they can be considered high school graduates. To shake off her anxieties at night, she would write in her diary.

Realizing that picking up the pieces of her life was a long process, Rose Ann said she was going to take one step at a time. When she has completely healed, she would try to find her mother.

“I am not betraying my father by doing all these because I am standing firm by my decision and my beliefs, and learned very well from him,” Rose Ann said.(Inquirer News Service)