Ratna Sarumpaet

Ratna Sarumpaet (born 16 July 1949) is an Indonesian human rights activist, theatrical producer, actress, film director, and writer. 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. 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. 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. The murder of Marsinah, a labour activist, in 1993 led Sarumpaet to become politically active. 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. Increasingly disillusioned by the autocratic acts of Suharto's New Order government, during the 1997 legislat... ()