Group asks Supreme Court to be ‘active, humane’ amid health crisis

A SUPPORT group of family members of political prisoners asked the Supreme Court to approve a legal remedy for release to “save lives of prisoners.” Fides Lim, spokesperson of support group Kapatid, asked the court to approve the remedy known as Writ of Kalayaan that was provided when it deliberated on the petition of 22 political prisoners asking to be released on humanitarian grounds due to the ongoing health crisis. “The Peralta Court provided a remedy with the Writ of Kalayaan to save lives of prisoners. Approve it,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “Don’t be a passive court, be an active, humane court. This is an issue not only about political prisoners but all prisoners who are elderly, very sick, pregnant, nursing mothers. We ask you to release more prisoners,” she added. Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen, in his opinion on the case, suggested the measure of Writ of Kalayaan, which will serve as a continuing mandamus to address jail congestion. She said they will pursue the remedy. The political prisoners filed in April the petition seeking for their release. However, the high court in July referred the case to the respective trial courts where their cases are pending as they treated the lawsuit as an application for bail or recognizance. “That judicial intervention we hoped for never happened,” Ms. Lim said. Despite this, she said that they are glad that through the petition, they were “able to put the subhuman condition of Filipino prisoners on the front burner,” noting that the government was pressed to take urgent healthcare measures in detention facilities. “We are glad to have compelled judicial and executive agencies to open the prison doors for a claimed number of 33,000 PDLs (persons deprived of liberty) although there is not a shadow of a political prisoner in these releases,” she said. She also asked the court to “grant relief” to detained activist Reina Mae Nasino “to correct the injustice done to her from the time she was falsely arrested with planted firearms to the time she was separated from her baby and her baby died.” Ms. Nasino was among the 22 political prisoners who filed the petition in April. She was initially allowed by a Manila trial court to attend her daughter’s wake and funeral from Oct. 14-16, but it was reduced to just six hours divided in two days after the jail warden opposed the three- day furlough, citing lack of personnel to accompany her. — Vann Marlo M. Villegas