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. She was released the following day.

2018 false assault claim

In September 2018, Sarumpaet posted a photo showing her bruised face which went viral online, claiming that she was assaulted by unknown assailants at the Husein Sastranegara International Airport in Bandung where she claimed to be attending an international conference. This resulted in prominent opposition figures, including Prabowo Subianto, publicly condemning the "cowardly attack". Subsequent police investigations found that she was not at the airport during the alleged time, and was instead in a plastic surgery clinic in Jakarta.

Soon afterward, she admitted that her claims were lies and that she made up the assault story to hide the plastic surgery from her family. She was also quoted as saying that she is "the best hoax creator". She was then fired from Prabowo Subianto's 2019 election campaign team, with Prabowo publicly apologizing for amplifying her claims. On 4 October 2018, she was apprehended at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, where she was about to fly to Chile to attend an international conference, with Jakarta's Tourism Agency funding her. She is suspected of violating Article 28 of the Electronic Information and Transactions Law for allegedly spreading fake news. According to police, Ratna paid for the plastic surgery from the same bank account that had been used to collect money for the victims of the June 2018 Lake Toba ferry disaster. State prosecutors in May 2019 recommended she be jailed for six years. On 11 July 2019, she was sentenced to two years in jail for deliberately spreading false information to create a public disturbance. After receiving sentence remissions in connection with Indonesian Independence Day and the Muslim holiday of Idul Fitri, she was granted parole and released on 26 December 2019, having served almost 15 months of her 2-year sentence. After leaving jail, she claimed she had been punished for "criticizing the government" and said her criticism was merely an expression of love for the country.

Despite claims that she would actively criticize the Joko Widodo administration after her release, she instead retracted herself from public appearances. Due to her case, she lost her reputation and credibility as a human rights activist and was disgraced by her former political allies.

On 18 April 2022, she returned to public appearance by appearing on Deddy Corbuzier's podcast. She revealed that she deliberately made the hoax to hide her facial surgery from her child as well as to take people's emotional and political situations to gain significant attention and popularity. Despite admitting her fault, she did not feel guilty and remained unapologetic, even becoming permissive with hoax-making. Her stances were immediately rebuked by Deddy during the podcast.