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Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti & Ratna Bangun have
completed sixteen months of their three-year prison
sentence for running a Christian kindergarten in
which some Muslim children attended.
The three women were jailed for, according to the
charges, attempting to convert Muslim children to
Christianity while they worked as teachers at a
kindergarten in Haurgeulis, Indramayu, West Java, in
which some Muslim parents decided, of their own free
will, to send their children to. The local branch of
the MUI, the Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics,
and not any of the parents, accused the women of
enticing the children to convert by giving them
presents. No evidence of this was given in court and
no children had become Christians.
The women, whose names are sometimes spelled as Dr.
Rebecca Laonita, Mrs Ratna Mala Bangun and Mrs Ety
Pangesti, are domiciled in a prison in Indramayu in
which are 12 women and 400 men. They get along fine
with their co-inmates, and with the warders, and are
resigned to serving out their terms
Ratna,
at 33, is the youngest of the trio
and has two children, one of whom is
aged only three years. Her oldest,
Joshua, found it hard to accept her
imprisonment but she says he is now
“strong”. Her husband, Sembiring,
often works away from home so her
children are cared for by a female
relative in Sumatra. Because of the
distance Ratna has only seen her
children twice since going to jail.
Ratna
says that she
was originally very afraid of what her father’s reaction to news of
her jailing would be, that he might have a heart attack or something
similar. But it turns out he reacted with fortitude and some pride,
and is reported to have given this message:
I’m proud of my daughter, proud of
the suffering she has to go through for Christ. So be firm, keep
doing God’s will, keep spreading the gospel of the love of
Christ, without fear. And now I will go about the village [in
Sumatra] and tell everyone that my child is in prison and that I
am proud of her.
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Meanwhile Eti, 44, says that one of her
three children, a 7 year old son, is very ashamed of his mother’s
situation because other children taunt him about it.
Eti is married to Sutrisno and her two other children are aged
twenty and fourteen.
Rebekka, 48 years old,
has two university-attending children, as well as an
adopted daughter, Linda. This last is reported to
travel over 100 km’s per day by motorbike, with her
own young daughter riding along, to bring food to
the prison for the women.
Rebekka is a medical
doctor and she is said to help inmates with their
health problems.
Since their
time in prison the women have received about 15,000
letters or cards of sympathy and support from around
the world and their ongoing legal expenses are
handled by the UK branch of “Open Doors”.
Movie clip of the ladies release from prison - click
here
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