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‘Marsinah’ uses
the power of art
to fight injustice
Playwright Ratna Sarumpaet
By Stephanie Kendrick
was jailed because of her work
Star-BulletinON May 8, 1993, the body of a 23-year-old Indonesian factory worker named Marsinah was found in a forest shack. Her abdomen had been ripped open and an autopsy found evidence of rape.
Five days earlier, Marsinah and her fellow employees had staged a strike at the watch-manufacturing plant where they worked in Sidoarjo, East Java. Their demand? Wages of $1.25 per day.
On May 5, Marsinah and 12 other strikers were charged by the local military command with holding illegal meetings. That evening, Marsinah disappeared.
When Indonesian playwright Ratna Sarumpaet found out about the crime seven years ago, she felt shock, anger and guilt.
"That was the first time I started learning about the condition of labor in my country," said Sarumpaet. "I grew up in a very different situation."
Her family was not wealthy, she said, but laborers like Marsinah were of an entirely different class.
Shortly after learning about the murder, Sarumpaet began writing a play entitled "Marsinah: A Song from the Underworld." It was staged one year after the killing.
Despite the play, the crime was covered up and the soldiers believed to have been responsible for the murder were never brought to trial.
When, in 1997, the police closed Marsinah's case without charging anyone with the crime, Sarumpaet wrote a second play. It took her about a week.
"Maybe I was too angry, or maybe this case was in my blood already," she said. "I, and the (theater) company I work with, felt a responsibility to this case."
That monologue, entitled "Marsinah Accuses," will be presented at Kumu Kahua on Sunday.
Following the performance, Sarumpaet will be joined by Hawaiian playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, recipient of the Hawai'i Award for Literature, and Roger Long, professor of theater at the University of Hawai'i, for a dialogue about the importance of democracy.
This is not a theoretical discussion for Sarumpaet. Two years ago, she was jailed by the Suharto regime for staging "Marsinah Accuses."
"I wrote the play and they got angry with me," she said. The military put up blockades in three of the cities toured by the play, trying to stop people from going to the theaters. This despite the fact that in 1995, artists in Indonesia had won a reprieve from government licensing.
"They make the rules and then they break them," she said. "If they don't like something, then they can just stop it."
Sarumpaet described the military force behind her arrest as horrible, but said the two-and-a- half months she spent in prison were bearable. There, she was popular and respected by jailers and jailed alike.
"They even called me the 'mother of the people,' because they knew what I fight for," she said.
Sarumpaet believes in Indonesia's new government's commitment to democracy and hopes to avoid further arrest, but she expects progress to be slow.
"The military, they are still hunting and frightening people," she said. "I still have the fear."
But that fear does not silence her.
"What I am doing is nothing special. It's something everybody has to do; you have to fight for your rights," she said. "I really appreciate now what the power of art is, what the power of the play is that I can use to help other people."
Manoa journal, published by the University of Hawai'i Press, was instrumental in bringing Sarumpaet and her play to Hawaii. "Marsinah Accuses" appears in English translation for the first time in "Silenced Voices," the journal's summer issue, which focuses on contemporary Indonesian authors who have been censored in their country.
"Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world and it's really our Pacific neighbor and there's just a tremendous lack of information about the country," said Manoa editor Frank Stewart.
"It's really one of the last countries that's come from a dictatorship into an emerging democracy.
"Indonesian writers have a great deal to tell us about freedom of expression," he said.
For her part, Sarumpaet hopes to show that a horrible crime committed far away has relevance.
"Everybody knows America. ... But what do Americans know about the rest of the world?" she asked. "I hope they can understand that they have brothers and sisters who are not as happy as them. There must be a Marsinah everywhere."
Demand for "Marsinah Accuses" has taken Sarumpaet all over the globe. She heads next to Ireland, then Greece and the Philippines. But the guilt travels with her.
"I've been all around the world because of this play, but the case is still there," she said. And still unresolved.
On Stage
What: "Marsinah Accuses" by Ratna Sarumpaet
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