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January/February 2000
The Shut-In
Freedom Fighter
by
Hope D.J. Harle-Mould
She was an old woman and a shut-in.
She had MS, multiple sclerosis,
which was getting worse with each passing year.
For a long time now
she could hardly walk or move about at all.
To go to the bathroom was an exhausting chore.
Many the night when she cried herself to sleep
knowing she would almost never leave her home again,
except perhaps when they came some day
to take her out...
to be buried.
One day something impelled her to read her rarely read Bible.
From that time on, she fully accepted her weakness,
for she realized that it could be her gift of strength.
It was as if she had never heard these words before:
Three times I prayed to the Lord
to take away this painful physical ailment.
But God answered: "My grace is all you need,
for my power is strongest when you are weak."
So I am content
with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and
difficulties,
for Christ's sake.
For when I am weak,
then I am strong.
Suddenly, she looked at a machine in her room
that had always been there,
but instead of seeing the machine
she saw the whole world,
beautiful and blue, laced in white clouds,
with every continent turning past her gaze.
Her typewriter would be her eyes and hands in the world.
Her typewriter would be her exodus from isolation.
Her typewriter would be her salvation.
Her ministry became letter-writing,
and her cause was human rights.
From her bed, from her sofa, or from her sitting chair,
she typed letter after letter
in pursuit of this impossible dream.
She dedicated her isolation, her vacant time, and her waning energy
to the task of setting free "prisoners of conscience"
in whatever country, East or West.
Her friends nicknamed her
"the shut-in freedom fighter."
Through Amnesty International,
the most renowned human rights group in the world,
she adopted a prisoner of conscience from Indonesia.
At first she didn't even know where Indonesia was.
But she soon found out.
From a packet of carefully researched documents they sent her,
she learned all about her prisoner's background:
who his family was, how he was arrested, which prison he was in,
and what his current health was like.
She also learned that Amnesty International was giving her and no one
else the sole responsibility for obtaining his
release.
Her prisoner was accused of being a communist,
like any other dissenter in Indonesia.
His only crime had been to join in a nonviolent protest
against the thousands being tortured there.
Unfortunately, he became one of them.
He was arrested without charges.
There was no trial.
He had been tortured for 14 continuous days
when first arrested
to try and force a confession saying that he was a communist.
For five years he had been held behind bars.
Because of the torture, his health had steadily deteriorated.
The woman knew little more about him than this,
but she got to work.
Her outpourings of letters began.
She wrote letters urging his release to the dictator of Indonesia.
She wrote letters asking about his health to the Minister of Justice.
She wrote letters of support to his family.
In just four weeks, she heard that her prisoner had been released!
But the report proved false.
The letters continued.
The shut-in freedom fighter not only wrote to Indonesia.
While she worked for the liberation of her adopted prisoner,
she wrote on behalf of the "prisoner of the month,"
one prisoner who was in critical need of immediate
international support.
She wrote for information
on how to be effective in influencing human rights policy.
She wrote to human rights groups
and to the survivors of the Holocaust.
She wrote to presidents and dictators,
legislators and cabinet officials in many countries
imploring them to abide by the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And she got so many of her friends and neighbors interested in
prisoners of conscience, that they formed a new chapter of
Amnesty International right in her own town.
Month after month dragged by
as the old woman struggled for her prisoner's release.
"He has been rotting in prison for five years,"
the shut-in said to herself.
"How can I give up now after only five months?"
So she redoubled her efforts and varied her tactics.
Instead of communicating merely with top government leaders,
she began to systematically write
to almost every government official in Indonesia.
She wrote to the Cabinet and the Congress.
She wrote to subordinates in the Department of Justice.
She wrote to prison administrators and wardens.
Finally, she even got the names and addresses of the very guards
in his prison
and she wrote impassioned pleas to them.
She was right in the middle of writing her 17th letter
to the Minister of Justice when she opened that day's mail.
Her prisoner had written her a letter!
From his own home!
He was free!
Ripping it open, she eagerly read:
They kept seeing and hearing my name.
I was lost.
I was nothing to them.
They had locked me away for years for no cause.
They had totally forgotten me.
But you wouldn't let them forget.
My name! They kept hearing my name.
Thank God for you, my woman.
You kept my name alive.
When they finally released me, they said
my file was two inches thick
with correspondence.
Most of it was from you.
They simply said that the file was two inches thick
and that was too much trouble for just one prisoner.
I owe you my life.
Words can never express my thanks.
May every political prisoner's file become two inches thick.
Thank you.
Streams of tears wet the envelope.
She shook her head reading it again and again.
Now she could die in peace, she smiled,
knowing she had saved one person.
Except for one thing.
That last thing that he had said.
Even yet,
She types....
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