Kemberly Jul Luna (1989 – 2009): a victim of social injustice

“…how are we to establish in this country, so long exploited by both foreign and native oppressors, a society of justice and peace, based on cordial cooperation among all social ranks and levels?” –Fr. Horacio de la Costa, S.J.

A distraught Kemberly Jul Luna thought that she’d find the answer among the cadres waging a protracted people’s war from the mountains.

Although still a communist/socialist at heart, I no longer support the local communist insurgency in this country. Actually, I never did because during my younger years, I was affiliated with the “rejectionists” or those who didn’t reaffirm to Maoist and Stalinist principles and strategies.

But in reaction to my statement above, I find Luna’s fate both appalling and sad:

Hers was a campus life spent mostly at late night parties and drinking sprees, waking up the next day with a nasty hangover. Still, she got good grades.

Kemberly Jul Luna’s binges seemed normal for someone studying at a state university, living alone but often surrounded by friends drawn by her natural charm and intelligence, who fondly called her “Kimay.”

The 21-year-old Kemberly, however, traded her little comforts for the cold and the unknown world in the mountains of Bukidnon. There, her small joys and miseries were easily swallowed up by the people’s wretchedness; it became easy for her to redeem herself from old habits that were slowly causing her decay.

She was doing well with the peasants of Bukidnón, her friends thought, until that fateful day when a bullet pierced her right breast and went through her nape in Sitio Bulacao, Barangay Concepción, City of Valencia. It was 10 days before Christmas.

Gun battle lasted for days

Army Maj. Michelle Anayrón, spokesperson of the 4th Infantry Division, said Kemberly was killed in an encounter with soldiers belonging to the 8th Infantry Battalion.

“The soldiers were on foot patrol when they chanced upon the NPA encampment,” Anayrón said. The gun battle, which started at 10 a.m., lasted for days, he added.

Kemberly died a member of the communist New People’s Army (NPA). She was Adriane, Joshua, or Ma’am Nurse to the people she had worked with in the highlands.

Her body, already rotting, was found dumped, along with seven other guerrillas, deep in the forest of Concepción, days after the Dec. 15 encounter.

Kemberly was an AB English student at Mindanáo State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) before she joined the communist movement in early 2009. Inquirer.net

What drove such a young and pretty lass to give up a life of comfort and beautiful promises to the brutality of the highlands? What right did these communist terrorists have to lure and mislead young lives to their doom? Why are there still disenchanted men and women in today’s supposedly civilized society? Is it a question of what social structure we should have?

If Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ theory of the inevitability of a popular revolution cannot be stopped, then let the natural turn of social events take its own damn course. There would be no need to wage a protracted (and hurried) “people’s war”, a war that not even a multitude or a majority of urban poor societies and laborers can fully grasp.

Our military and police pigs may be @$$h0le$, but that doesn’t make Sison’s NPA –or any armed revolutionary group– different from them.

Just because Maoism succeeded in China does it imply that the same strategies will easily apply here in our archipelago or elsewhere. For the nth time, our country is no longer a feudal society. It is apparent that, for almost a century, armed struggle is never the answer to Fr. de la Costa’s question. It has only taken thousands of lives (military, civilians, and liquidated comrades due to purging).

Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that a terrifying air of social injustice pervades all throughout the country for decades (just watch and listen to the plight of the urban poor contestants in Wowowee). And this kind of social condition demoralized young intellectuals such as Luna, compelling them to wage war against the authorities, all in the name of justice and, ultimately, lasting peace.

It’s not an enemy bullet that did Luna in — it’s social injustice’s fatal blow which snuffed her life out.