Detainee asks court to let her go to baby’s wake

MANILA, Philippines — Seeking “true compassion and mercy that any inconsolable mother in deep sorrow needs,” political detainee Reina Mae Nasino has asked a Manila court and Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta to let her see “for the last time” her 3-month-old daughter.

Baby River, who was separated by the court from her mother more than a month after being born, died in a hospital last week after being admitted on Sept. 24 for diarrhea and fever.

In a very urgent motion and manifestation filed in the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 37 on Monday, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers asked that Nasino be given “a decent and humane chance to be with her daughter whom she was not able to comfort and hold while in sickbed up to her dying hours …, and to properly grieve over her tragic and untimely passing.”

On Oct. 9, while Baby River was still fighting for her life at the intensive care unit of Philippine General Hospital, Nasino’s lawyer filed a very urgent motion for furlough to allow her to visit her daughter. The baby, however, died later that night due to acute respiratory distress syndrome.

The 23-year-old Nasino was among several activists arrested in 2019. Militant group Kapatid claimed she was arrested without a warrant, based on trumped-up charges while the evidence was planted.