One woman begged for mercy and another sobbed uncontrollably as Indonesia’s Aceh province flogged nearly a dozen people on Thursday, including a Buddhist man charged with breaking local Islamic law.
Despite widespread criticism, public whipping is a common punishment for a range of offences in the deeply conservative region at the tip of Sumatra island, including gambling, drinking alcohol and having gay sex or relations outside of marriage.
Aceh is the only region in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country that imposes Islamic law.
On Thursday, dozens watched as 11 people were whipped outside a mosque in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.
A masked sharia officer rained down between eight and 32 strokes from a rattan cane on their backs after they were caught with members of the opposite sex.
The six men and five women — all in their late teens and early 20s — were rounded up by religious officers who caught them behaving amorously, a crime under local law. [news.com.au] Read more
