52
168
2020 Annual Report on the Human Rights Situation in the Philippines
As Nasino remained
locked up in the Manila
City Jail, her daughter
was taken to the intensive
care unit of the Philippine
General Hospital. This
led to the filing by NUPL
of an urgent motion to
allow Nasino to visit
her daughter. On 09
October 2020, River
died due to pneumonia
complications.233
Rights of LGBTQIA+
during the COVID-19
Pandemic
169
Members of LGBTQIA+
group
experienced
abuses as punishment
for violating lockdown
protocols
and
for
exercising their rights and
for voicing their dissent
towards a particular law.
The Philippine authorities
used humiliation and
other degrading acts,
such as dancing and
kissing,
to
punish
quarantine violators who
happened to be members
of
LGBTQIA+.234
Some members of the
LGBTQIA+ community
also
experienced
a
crackdown when they
held a protest against the
passage of the Anti-Terror
law.235 Such conditions for LGBTQIA+ members of the community are not new. They are
often humiliated, ostracized, discriminated against, and worst, killed by either members
of the family or the public. They have suffered various dismal experiences such as the
following cases:
170
On 05 April 2020, three LGBTQIA+ people in Pandacaqui, Mexico, Pampanga, were
ordered by a barangay captain, Christopher Bombing Punzalan, to do lewd acts in front
233
Buan, Lian. “The role they failed to play: How courts let down baby River” Rappler, October 12, 2020, available
athttps://www.rappler.com/nation/how-courts-let-down-reina-mae-nasino-baby-river, accessed last 09 March 2021.
234
See https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/08/philippines-uses-humiliation-covid-curfew-punishment.
235
See https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/29/philippines-police-crack-down-lgbt-protest.