Iris Gonzales reflects on the human cost of the state’s war against its critics.
When three-month-old River was laid to rest in a white casket adorned with stuffed toys and flowers, in a public cemetery here in the capital on one scorching Friday morning last October, her mother, detained human rights activist Reina Mae Nasino, was granted a prison furlough to bury her daughter.
But she remained handcuffed the whole time and had to wear full PPE, the only one in the crowd of police escorts, activists and journalists who had to wear a hazmat suit.
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