Ratna Sarumpaet

Ratna Sarumpaet (born 16 July 1949) is an Indonesian human rights activist, theatrical producer, actress, film director, and writer.

Sarumpaet was born on 16 July 1949 in Tarutung, North Tapanuli Regency, North Sumatra.

She was the fifth of ten children born to Saladin Sarumpaet, Minister of Defence in the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia rebel government, and Julia Hutabarat, a women's rights activist.

Both were also prominent in the Christian community.

Three of her siblings – Mutiara Sani, Riris Sarumpaet and Sam Sarumpaet – are members of the Indonesian art community.

As a teenager she moved to Jakarta to study there, finishing her high school studies at PSKD Menteng.

In his biography, her classmate Chrisye recalled that Sarumpaet was very confident; he noted that she enjoyed writing poetry and then reading it in a loud voice while other students were engaging in other activities.

After seeing a play by Willibrordus S. Rendra in 1969, she dropped out and joined his troupe.

Five years later, after marrying and converting to Islam, she founded the Satu Merah Panggung; the troupe did mostly adaptations of foreign dramas.

By 1969 she was studying architecture at the University of Indonesia.

It was at this time that she saw a performance of Kasidah Berzanji (The Berzanji Chant) by a troupe led by Willibrordus S. Rendra, which convinced her to drop out of university and join the troupe.

In 1974 she founded Satu Merah Panggung Theater, which performed adaptations of foreign works such as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet – in the latter, Sarumpaet played the titular role.

Sarumpaet became interested in Islam in her teenage years, but only converted around 1974 after marrying Achmad Fahmy Alhady, an Arab-Indonesian.

Together they had four children: Mohammad Iqbal Alhady, Fathom Saulina, Ibrahim Alhady, and Atiqah Hasiholan.

Atiqah is also an actress and would later star in her mother's film Jamila.

In 1976, Sarumpaet, who was suffering domestic violence at home and discouraged by the market, left theatre and entered the film industry.

This film was submitted to the 82nd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film but not nominated.

The following year, she released her first novel, Maluku, Kobaran Cintaku (Maluku, Flame of My Love).

As she became increasingly concerned about her marriage and unhappy about the local theatre scene, two years later Sarumpaet left her troupe and began to work in television; she only returned in 1989, after divorcing her abusive husband.

After her divorce, which took several years and required records of her broken ribs to satisfy the religious courts, she returned to theatre in 1989 with a performance of Shakespeare's Othello.

Sarumpaet began working as a director in 1991, with the television serial Rumah Untuk Mama (House for Mother), which was broadcast on the state-owned television station TVRI.

That same year, she adapted Antigone, a tragedy by French writer Jean Anouilh, in a Batak setting.

The murder of Marsinah, a labour activist, in 1993 led Sarumpaet to become politically active.

The stageplay was based on the 1993 murder of Marsinah, a labour rights leader from East Java, and explored issues of political repression.

The murder sparked a period of political activity for Sarumpaet.

According to Barbara Hatley in Inside Indonesia, Sarumpaet was obsessed with the case, including seeing Marsinah's face while writing.

Sarumpaet later reported that the way the murder was conducted, with Marsinah raped and mutilated, then discarded in a forest, "symbolised the deep, trivialising contempt which men, especially powerful men, feel towards women who dare to speak out".

She wrote her first original stageplay, Marsinah: Nyanyian dari Bawah Tanah (Marsinah: Song from the Underground), in 1994 after becoming obsessed with the case.

This was followed by several other politically charged works, several of which were banned or restricted by the government.

Sarumpaet's first original stageplay, Marsinah: Nyanyian dari Bawah Tanah (Marsinah: Song from the Underground), was performed in 1994 despite a sponsor abandoning the project near the showing date.

After Marsinah, Sarumpaet and Satu Merah Panggung performed several other politically themed dramas, including Terpasung (Chained; 1995), about male dominance and violence against women, and Pesta Terakhir (The Last Party; 1996), about the funeral of a dictator without any mourners.

Increasingly disillusioned by the autocratic acts of Suharto's New Order government, during the 1997 legislative elections Sarumpaet and her troupe led pro-democracy protests.

In 1997, after the Marsinah case was closed due to contaminated DNA evidence, Sarumpaet released Marsinah Menggugat (Marsinah Revolts; 1997), a monologue in which Marsinah describes her murder.

For one of these, in March 1998, she was arrested and jailed for seventy days for spreading hatred and attending an "anti-revolutionary" political gathering.

After her release, Sarumpaet continued to participate in pro-democracy movements; these actions led to her fleeing Indonesia after hearing rumours that she would be arrested for dissent.

When she returned to Indonesia, Sarumpaet continued to write politically charged stageplays.

She became head of the Jakarta Art Board in 2003; two years later she was approached by UNICEF and asked to write a drama to raise awareness of child trafficking in Southeast Asia.

The resulting work served as the foundation for her 2009 feature film debut, Jamila dan Sang Presiden (Jamila and the President).

In July 2019 she was sentenced to two years in jail for spreading hoaxes.

Sarumpaet, born into a politically active Christian family in North Sumatra, initially studied architecture in Jakarta.