CRY ME A RIVER
Reina Mae Nasino, wearing personal protective equipment, puts a candle on the tomb of her daughter, River, at the Manila North Cemetery on Oct. 16, 2020. Nasino, a detained activist, was allowed by the court to attend the wake and burial of her three-month old daughter while under heavy security.
AMOTHER, an activist who has been detained at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology ( BJMP), laid her infant daughter to rest on Friday.
Reina Mae Nasino was given a three-hour furlough by the Manila Regional Trial Court to see her child, River, buried at the Manila North Cemetery.
Nasino was handcuffed and clad in personal protective equipment or PPE, and was surrounded by BJMP personnel in full battle gear.
Nasino also spent three hours at her daughter’s wake in Pandacan district with 40 security escorts.
The court shortened the activist’s furlough from three days to six hours, on the request of the BJMP, citing lack of personnel.
Nasino’s lawyer submitted a “very urgent motion” for the furlough last Friday, after the child’s doctor said Baby River would “expire at any moment.”
The court only granted the motion on Tuesday.
Karapatan General Secretary Cristina Palabay said in a statement that “there are no words to describe this terrible loss but a grave and cruel injustice not only to Baby River, Reina Mae Nasino, and their grieving family but against the Filipino people.”
Palabay blamed President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration for the infant’s death, “especially when there have been numerous occasions that agencies and government bodies could have acted to avert this tragedy.”
She said that had the courts granted an urgent petition for a pregnant Reina Mae’s release on humanitarian grounds or could have allowed her to breastfeed and take care of her child for a year, the baby would still be alive. Nasino spent most of her pregnancy at the Manila City Jail and, by court order, was separated from her daughter after spending only a month with her
The Department of the Interior and Local Government ( DILG) defended the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), which escorted Nasino to her daughter’s wake.
DILG spokesman and Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said the BJMP jail officers acted with “professionalism, restraint, and integrity” despite the “provocation, insults, and verbal abuse from leftist groups aligned with Ms. Nasino.”
The intent of the group was to provoke the jail officers to create a “media spectacle, hog the headlines, and portray the BJMP and the government, by extension, as heartless and insensitive to the plight of Nasino,” Malaya said in a statement.
Malaya offered condolences to Nasino, emphasizing that they respected “her right to grieve the death of her daughter.”
Nasino was arrested in November 2019 and charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.