Reina Mae “Ina” Asis Nasino is Manila youth leader, Tondo community organizer, and

eight-month pregnant detainee at Manila City Jail. She is an activist facing trumped-up
cases whose continuing detention reflects the worsening human rights situation under
the government of Rodrigo Duterte.

Reina Mae “Ina” Asis Nasino is a former student leader in Eulogio “Amang” Rodriguez I
nstitute of Science and Technology (EARIST), a public college in Sta. Mesa, Manila
where she was taking up a vocational course under the Special Opportunity Program.

She led the formation of Musicians for Peace EARIST Chapter that aims to unite
musicians, music enthusiasts, and music-oriented organizations for a just and lasting
peace based on social justice. She became part of its Executive Committee in 2014.
Later on, she also became a member of Anakbayan EARIST that campaigned for the
call to rebuild the Juan C. Laya Gymnasium in the campus. The #RebuildTheGymNow
campaign staged protests and mass actions to oppose the looming privatization of the
gymnasium, the reconstruction of which the school administration used as justification
to illegally collect millions of pesos from students through the Development Fee and the
Construction of New Building and Facilities Fee. Anakbayan EARIST also launched
campaigns against the illegal collection of redundant and questionable school fees,
which is part of its program to uphold a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented quality
of education.

Reina Mae witnessed the miserable status of marginalized Filipinos when she lived
among the urban poor communities in Manila. She grew up in a poor community in
Pandacan together with her two siblings and her mother who is working as a Barangay
Police Officer in their area, and has been one of the youth leaders who chose to live in
other poor communities in Manila like Baseco and Tondo. This has led her to dedicate
all her time in defending and upholding basic human rights through local mass struggles
and campaigns.

She became part of the Manila Urban Poor Network (MUPN), a broad network calling
for collective response to protect the rights and welfare of the poor in Manila. She
stayed with the residents of Smokey Mountain in Tondo. She joined the Kalipunan ng
Damayang Mahihirap (KADAMAY) Manila and helped form the Neighborhood
Association in Upper Smokey Mountain to strengthen the campaign for the economic
demands of the residents such as potable water supply and electricity connection. She
engaged with various nongovernment organizations to help provide support and
services like medical missions and livelihood programs for the community in Smokey
Mountain.

On November 5, 2019, Reina Mae was illegally arrested together with Ram Carlo
Bautista and Alma Moran at the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) Manila Office
in Gagalangin, Tondo. Ram is the Popular Struggle Committee Director of BAYAN
Manila and the Lead Convener of MUPN while Alma is a Secretariat member of the
Manila Workers Unity. Firearms and explosives were planted during the raid at the
BAYAN Manila Office and perjury cases were filed by state forces against the three.
They were detained for a month at the Manila Police District (MPD) Headquarters in
Ermita under the custody of the Crime Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). They
were transferred to the CIDG Headquarters at Camp Crame in December 2019.

It was in Camp Crame where Reina Mae learned that she was already 1-month
pregnant from her relationship with her partner.

She and Alma Moran were transferred to the female dormitory in Manila City Jail in
January 2020. They are faced with the miserable conditions inside the congested jails.
Hundred inmates jammed each dorm that only holds fifty people. Water supply is also
scarce.
Ina’s pregnancy exposes her further to a very fragile state amid the uncontrolled
outbreak of COVID-19 in the entire Manila City Jail compound. There are confirmed
cases of COVID-19 in the female dorm. In April, Reina Mae fell ill with fever. She is
having recurrent bouts of depression because she is afraid for her health and that of her
unborn child.

As of June 2020, more than seven months since they were illegally arrested and
detained, the three activists are still not arraigned. There are ongoing hearings
regarding the motions filed by their legal counsel to quash the search warrants and to
suppress the planted evidences. Their lawyer is filing a motion for Reina Mae’s prenatal
checkup because she is expecting to give birth in July 2020.
Ina’s mother joined other relatives of political prisoners on April 8, 2020 in filing a
petition at the Supreme Court for the urgent release of inmates who are elderly, sick,
and pregnant for humanitarian reasons.
Karapatan: Reduction of Reina Mae Nasino’s furlough a
merciless act of torture and injustice
Submitted on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 11:54 
 Karapatan

 
 National

 
 Press release


The reduction of political prisoner Reina Mae Nasino's furlough is a “merciless act of torture and injustice”
human rights alliance Karapatan stated, as the group led various human rights advocates indignation
protest today at the Commission on Human Rights Liwasang Diokno to denounce the Manila Regional
Trial Court (RTC) Branch 47’s decision to lessen Nasino’s furlough from three days to two days at three
hours each after the Manila City Jail (MCJ) Female Dormitory wrote a letter to the court yesterday,
October 13, opposing the court’s earlier decision. Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said that
“nothing could be more cruel than giving a grieving mother such false hope.”

“Ano pa ba ang gusto nila? They have already put Reina Mae Nasino through so much pain and
suffering, from jailing her on false charges, taking Baby River away from her a few weeks after giving
birth, refusing to let her be with her baby’s dying moments — and now they are shortening her only
chance to be with her dead baby? The court has already granted her furlough and the least the Manila
City Jail could’ve done is to respect the decision. Instead, they torturously crushed her hopes to pieces.
Baby River is already gone; all she’s asking is to be able to properly grieve this terrible loss with her
family and see her child one last time. Wala ba silang mga puso?” Palabay asked.

Yesterday, Manila RTC Branch 47 Judge Paulino Gallegos granted Nasino a furlough for three full days,
which was supposed to take effect starting today until Baby River's burial at the Manila North Cemetery
on Friday, October 16; however, merely a few hours after the court order was served, MCJ Female
Dormitory Jail Chief Inspector Maria Ignacia Monteron wrote to the court requesting that Nasino’s time for
visitation during the wake be reduced because they are supposedly “depleted of personnel.” Following
another hearing today, the court ordered to reduce Nasino's furlough to only two days: today, to visit Baby
River’s wake at La Funeraria Rey in Pandacan, Manila, and Friday, to join the funeral. She will only have
three hours — 1 to 4 p.m. — per day for the furlough.

The Karapatan officer said that “this is the very same excuse courts have used in the past to deny Reina
Mae Nasino's petition for her to take care of Baby River in a hospital or the MCJ Female Dormitory’s
prison nursery for a year — which could have averted this tragedy. Jail authorities are using all sorts of
alibis such as the supposed lack of personnel, funds, or facilities just to deliberately and inhumanely
prolong the agony of a mother grieving the death of her child! We are at loss for words for this appalling
cold-heartedness. They are killing Baby River over and over!”
She further pointed out that “while human rights violators and lawbreakers like Debold Sinas — one of the
masterminds behind the police raids that led to Reina Mae Nasino’s arrest — can walk away scot-free
from their blatant crimes and violations, political prisoners who are unjustly imprisoned on falsified
charges have to go through the eye of the needle for their humanitarian pleas with the legal maneuvers
orchestrated by none other than the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict to
ensure that those arrested in the Duterte administration’s merciless crackdown on dissent suffer and
suffer terribly behind bars.”

“The court not only failed to uphold the furlough it granted to Reina Mae Nasino but ultimately, it failed to
uphold humanity and compassion for a grieving mother and her dead child. We reassert our call to drop
all the fabricated charges against her, to hold accountable all those responsible for her arrest and the
death of Baby River, and to free her and all political prisoners on just and humanitarian grounds. We must
not let this injustice continue and claim another innocent life,” she ended.

The Manila Regional Trial Court earlier shortened the furlough it gave to Nasino to
visit her daughter from three straight days to only three hours in a day for two days:
from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. to attend the wake on Oct. 14, and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for her
daughter’s burial on Oct. 16
Tension marred Nasino’s visit to the wake of Baby River on Wednesday when her
police escorts prevented her from being interviewed by members of the media.
With this, De Guia reminded the government that Nasino “remains to be an accused
and thus, still presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
“Even in detention, persons deprived of liberty should not be subjected to any cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and that it remains to be a State
obligation to respect their inherent dignity and value as human beings, in line with the
United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners or the Nelson
Mandela Rules,” she added.

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1348691/chr-looking-into-nasino-case-
deeply-concerned-on-how-govt-is-handling-it#ixzz6bqN69gnS
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