The family from North Sumatra says Rudangta “Ruth” Sitepu and her husband may have been victims of a “forced disappearance”.
Family members have sent an open letter to President Joko Widodo calling on the government to ask Malaysia for assistance in finding Ruth, saying she had become “a victim of discriminatory actions” here.
According to The Jakarta Post, Ruth had lived in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, where she worked as a seamstress, since 2000. She met Pastor Joshua Hilmy in 2004 and married him the same year.
Ruth’s youngest brother, Iman Setiawan Sitepu, said she stopped responding to Facebook messages and phone calls in November 2016.
“A good friend of our sister contacted us in Sumatra and told us that our sister had been reported missing because of things related to religion,” he said in the letter.
On March 6, 2017, the landlord of Ruth and her husband filed a missing persons report, according to a chronology of the case made available to the paper.
More than a week later, the police claimed that there were no leads and the case remains unsolved, it said.
According to Iman, his sister would never break the law.
He filed a report with the Indonesian foreign ministry’s citizen protection department last April but did not get a favourable response, the paper said.
The Post said Ruth had been a Christian since birth. The couple, considered good Samaritans in their community, “opened their house” to anyone in need, it quoted a family friend, Lay Hua, as saying.
“They are not a threat,” Lay Hua added.
It said that in March 2006, at their traditional wedding in Langkat regency, North Sumatra, Joshua revealed to the family that he used to be a Muslim but had converted to Christianity – something which the paper said is punishable under Malaysian law.
Last June, the Indonesian Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) heard about the case and contacted the family. In October, Kontras and two lawyers went to Langkat to meet the Sitepu family.
The foreign ministry told Kontras last week that the case, along with two others, was still being investigated by the Malaysian police and the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam).
According to The Post, the disappearance of Ruth and Joshua mirrors those of pastor Raymond Koh and activist Amri Che Mat.
Koh’s disappearance on Feb 13, 2007, made headlines after his alleged abduction was caught on CCTV in Petaling Jaya.
Malaysian lawyer Michelle Wong, who has been monitoring the case, argued that the same thing might have happened to Ruth and Joshua.
“This is based on the police’s own statement that all four cases have the same modus operandi,” the Post said.
With Kontras and the law firm in tow, the family has renewed their efforts to find Ruth, it added.