'What I'm fighting for today is an extension
of what I fought for before'

SHE WAS a fish vendor at the age of five to help feed her family. But Oebanda grew up to become Kumander Liway, renowned throughout Negros for her exploits as a communist guerrilla. Arrested in 1982, when she was eight months pregnant, Oebanda was released with other political prisoners after Marcos fell. Moved by the tragedy of the flood in Ormoc, Leyte that killed 8,000 people in 1991, the former rebel helped form the Visayan Forum
to raise funds for the victims. Since then, the Forum has rescued young Visayans brought to Manila to work as domestic helpers and maltreated by their employers. Oebanda won an international award for her work in 2005.

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