MAASIN CITY (PIA) — A former high-ranking propaganda officer of the Communist Terrorist Group (CTG) in Eastern Visayas has turned her back on the underground movement.
In a complete twist, the officer has become a speaker for the government side, through the Situational Awareness and Knowledge Management (SAKM) Cluster of the Regional Task Force 8 to end Local Communist Armed Conflict (RTF8-ELCAC), speaking in gatherings with students, and press conferences.
Alma Gabin, 38, once a promising UP-Tacloban college student, served as secretary of the CTG’s regional propaganda bureau at one time in her 16 years’ stay as active member of the CPP-NPA-NDF in the region.
In a sharing of her personal experience during the media engagement organized by the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), at Villa Romana Hotel, Maasin City, on Wednesday, September 20, Gabin said she was arrested for murder case in June 2020 at her hometown, Tolosa, Leyte.
She was released after 10 months in jail for failure of witnesses to appear in Court.
On why she joined underground, Gabin said all she wanted was to have good grades for a reaction paper.
“Ini-expose kami sa community, mga social issues,” said Gabin, who started to be indoctrinated right inside the UP campus at the age of 15, a first year college, taking up Business Management course.
Before she knew it, she was already deeply engaged, a fresh, active recruit, drawn into an intricate network of activities, rallies, Bible sharing, that did not mention actual recruitment in the first place, but did use shared interests and idealism of youngsters on themes of “isms” — socialism, imperialism, capitalism.
She eventually left the comforts of a college student’s life in her third year, to be part of a system which bites the hand of the institution that offered her free schooling and learning, and instead chose to fight the sovereign government through armed struggle.
In her presentation, Gabin revealed that she rose from the ranks, serving in regional white area work of the CPP-NPA-NDF for 10 years, and red area work for six years, in which five of those years were spent in Northern Samar, and one year in Southern Leyte.
White areas refer to places where the government maintains a stronger presence, and insurgents have less influence, making it challenging for them to operate openly in urban areas, while in red areas the insurgents have a significant presence and a degree of control.
Gabin revealed that her work involved sending press releases by email to broadcast, print outlets, saying that some media outlets have been penetrated by printing or airing directly the news releases she distributed.
On why she did not surrender, she said she was scared with thoughts of being tortured, of being used to manhunt others, and, with no more information to extract from her, of being dispensed.
But the opposite happened in the days of her capture, for she was taken care of, her needs were met.
She is now happily living with her live-in partner — also a fellow rebel like her — and two little kids, a four-year-old and a newborn baby, with a home and a thriving sari-sari store business acquired out of generous public and private donors. (LDL/MMP/PIA Southern Leyte)
