Brutal punishment: 85 lashes for gay sex
SHAKY phone footage shows two men being caught in bed together during a raid. Now the punishment has been dished out for their “crime”.
World
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IT’S pretty easy to wind up being publicly caned by authorities in a province on the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island.
Canings in the region of Aceh are typically conducted using a thin, rattan cane in front of huge crowds outside mosques.
It’s a punishment for gambling, drinking alcohol, women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers. Young, unmarried adults are commonly sentenced to lashings for standing in proximity to someone of the opposite sex. And the casting net has now been widened.
On Wednesday, two men aged 20 and 23, were sentenced by a panel of judges in a sharia court to 85 lashes of the cane for having sexual relations with each other.
The sentencing coincided with International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
It marked the first time the punishment has been handed down for homosexuality since a sharia regulation banning the practice in Aceh was introduced in 2014.
In some cases, like that of the two men sentenced on Wednesday, authorities are going out of their way to ensure homosexual people are punished
The men were caught together in bed in March by vigilantes who burst into the boarding house where they were staying in provincial capital Banda Aceh.
Shaky phone footage of the raid that circulated online showed the vigilantes kicking, slapping and insulting the men, with one of them slumped naked on the ground during the attack.
The footage was used in court as evidence against the pair.
Presiding judge, Khairil Jamal, said the men were “legally and convincingly proven to have committed gay sex”.
“The defendants are proven to have committed sodomy and are found guilty,” he said.
One of the men pleaded for leniency and wept as his sentence was read out.
The chief prosecutor, Gulmaini, who goes by one name, said they will be caned next week, before the holy Muslim month of Ramadan starts about May 25.
Homosexuality is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia but a case before the country’s top court is seeking to criminalise gay sex and sex outside marriage.
Human Rights Watch said public caning constitutes torture under international law.
“The prosecution is very harsh. The verdict is harsher,” Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch Andreas Harsono said.
“It shows the increasingly conservative judiciary in Indonesia.”
There has been a surge in Indonesians punished by caning for engaging in sexual acts out of wedlock and homosexuality since a law adopted by Indonesia’s sharia-ruled province of Aceh was introduced three years ago.
The 2014 bylaw known as qanun jinaya, new criminal offences were introduced, including: consensual intimacy or sexual activity for unmarried couples; consensual sex outside marriage and same-sex sexual relations.
The law allows for up to 200 lashes in public as a punishment and has been heavily enforced, for unmarried couples and sex outside marriage, since it was introduced.
READ: The world’s most extreme punishments
Hundreds of people are caned for offences including selling alcohol, gambling, and sex outside marriage in Aceh every year.
In February this year, an Acehnese man and women were among many people in the region to be lashed for having sex without being married.
In 2016, Aceh authorities caned 339 people for a range of crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.
Among them were seven men and six women who were caned between nine and 25 times at Al Ikhlas Mosque, Aceh in October 2016 for being alone with someone of the opposite sex who was not a marriage partner or relative (khalwat), and committing sexual intimacy outside marriage (ikhtilath).
PUNISHED FOR BEING IN ‘CLOSE PROXIMITY’ TO A MAN
Acehnese woman, Nur Elita, 20, was punished for the offence of “kwalwat” — being in “proximity” to a man other than her husband or relative. — in December 2015. She was viciously caned in public as a punishment for the alleged crime.
The crowd cheered as Ms Elita was struck by a man wearing a mask.
Elita, who received five strokes doubled over in pain and clutched her shoulder before being carried to an ambulance by officials following her punishment.
The man she was accused of having contact with, Wahyudi Saputra, was forced to stand while he was also publicly caned.
Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia allowed to practice sharia law, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a war with separatists.
Human Rights Watch says the Aceh laws violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Indonesia ratified in 2005.
— With wires
Originally published as Brutal punishment: 85 lashes for gay sex
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