We Would Not Compromise Our Faith

ON April 14, 1989, I was conducting a meeting in the town of Maumere, on Flores Island, when government officials burst into the house and arrested me and three others.

The guards at the local prison tried to force us to salute the flag. When we refused, they beat us and kicked us and made us stand in the blistering sun for five days. We shivered at night on hard cement floors in our tiny cells, filthy, exhausted, and aching from our wounds. The prison warden repeatedly urged us to compromise, but we replied, “Until we die, we will not salute.” Like countless Christians before us, we felt privileged to “suffer for the sake of righteousness.”​—1 Pet. 3:14.