The couple, Loremie and her husband, Staff Sergeant Ken Camilan, want to live a normal and happy family with their children.
Never did Loremie think this dream would one day be dashed into pieces when the Communist Terrorist Group (CTG) ambushed her husband in Sipalay City and claimed his life on November 24, 2022.
“No words can express the pain I felt, especially that we have kids,” she said in tears during a recent press conference about Communist Terrorist Group Atrocities committed on Negros Island.
“I am overwhelmed by the support of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and my husband’s comrades,” she said.
Aside from the burial assistance, other support given to her includes educational subsidies for her children when they reach high school and college.
Presently, her eldest child is only eight years old and the youngest is only four years old.
“I didn’t expect this to happen,” she said, vividly recalling what her late husband used to say, that as soldiers, they are owned by the government.
Loremie questions CTG’s promise of change while engaging in killing innocent lives and depriving families of their loved ones.
She will now be both the mother and father of her children whom she prays will grow up as good people.
“I have no problem with the government because I have no one else to turn to. The kids go to school while I go to work, life must go on,” she said.
Loremie’s only appeal is to expedite the release of the benefits due to her family, because it has been almost a year since the process started, although she doesn’t blame anyone for it.
Meanwhile, Rochie Resotay, 39 years old and a mother, was inconsolable as she recounted the heartbreaking murder of her late husband, Eliseo Resotay, last August 9, 2023.
Eliseo was allegedly conniving with the authorities.
“Why will my husband become a military intelligence? He was just an ordinary overseas Filipino worker who went back to the country to become a farmer,” she said.
“Farming would have been a good opportunity for us through crop insurance assistance. Things were looking bright until they killed him, leaving me a widow and our child without a father,” she said in tears.
She has a message for CTGs.
“To those in the mountains, come down now because the benefits will come from the legitimate government, not from the revolutionary government. Live in peace under the established government. Enough killing of the innocent because families are displaced, and children are left without a parent,” she said.
Rochie said it is painful to hear her child ask where her father is.
“I trust the government even though I lost my husband. They provide for my needs even if my husband was a civilian victim of a communist atrocity,” she said.
She further said the army provides them with security from the enemies.
“Only God can take away our lives, no one else,” she stressed.
She thanked Calatrava town Mayor Marilyn Era for the assistance given to her child and would welcome other aid from the government as she now lives alone without a source of income. (PIA-6)