Courtesy of Kapatid
MANILA — A prisoners' rights group and the family of Adora Faye de Vera are appealing for her "humanitarian release" and immediate return to Manila due to security and health issues.
According to Ron de Vera, his 66-year-old mother is in need of urgent medical treatment due to chronic asthma and other complications.
"She needs immediate medical attention. She has asthma. She has anemia. She has difficulty walking. She feels pain in her bones, in her joints. So, that needs to be checked but there are no proper medical facilities in the area," he told ANC's "Rundown" on Tuesday.
Adora was arrested by police in Quezon City on Aug. 24 on a warrant for multiple murder and multiple frustrated murder charges with use of explosives.
She was immediately flown to an Iloilo jail to face the raps, which prisoners' rights group Kapatid claimed "make up the common pattern of trumped-up non-bailable charges to lock up activists as common criminals."
Adora was a symbol of torture and rape of women political prisoners during martial law, the group said.
Kapatid spokesperson Fides Lim echoed the family's call for help for Adora.
"We're starting now to press government officials requesting in particular to study and to open itself to the possibility for her humanitarian release," she told ANC.
This can range from the presidential prerogative of full pardon to unconditional amnesty to facilitating her release on recognizance, Lim added.
Ron is also worried for his mother's safety in light of alleged “tokhang-style” killings of prominent activists who were tagged by security forces as members of the communist rebel movement.
His father and Adora’s first husband, Manuel “Noni” Manaog, a community organizer, remains missing after he was abducted in 1990.
In a separate statement, Lim suggested that Adora, who brings to 803 the number of political prisoners, could be put under the legal custody of her younger brother, Commission on Higher Education chair Prospero "Popoy" de Vera III.
Prospero has distanced himself from his sister's arrest, saying he does not share Adora's views nor support her actions.
But Ron believed his uncle's remark is not yet final.
"He has his own reasons why he's saying things he has said. But you know, things are not definite," he said. "We are still, as a family, hoping that he would turn around and think about his relationship to his sister as a brother and not as a person in government."
Ron described the charges filed against his mother as "absurd".
"Her passion is working with peasant women... She's a writer, an artist. It's just not in her personality to actually be involved in anything as ridiculous as murder or even frustrated murder. It's just not like her," he added.