A couple was publicly flogged in the staunchly Islamic Aceh province of Indonesia on Tuesday for having sex outside of marriage, an AFP reporter witnessed, in the country’s only region to apply a version of Sharia law.
The man and woman, whose ages were not revealed, received 100 cane lashes each in a public park in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, with dozens of people watching.
“We implement Islamic law in Aceh, so whenever someone violates it, we have to carry out punishments like the caning we just conducted,” Rajesh Kana, an official from the local prosecutors’ office, told AFP.
Sexual relationships between unmarried persons are illegal in Aceh.
According to an AFP reporter on the scene, police used a rattan cane to flog the pair.
They were one of six people flogged on Tuesday.
Four others received between eight and 29 strokes for offenses such as making physical contact with a member of the opposite sex or drinking alcohol.
A woman sentenced to 27 lashes fainted during the final flogging of the rattan stick and had to be treated by paramedics.
Caning remains popular in Aceh as a means of punishing a variety of offenses, including gambling and homosexual behavior.
In January, Sharia police in Aceh caned an unmarried couple 140 times apiece, most likely the harshest punishment since Sharia law was imposed in the province in 2015.
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, but it officially accepts six religions and indigenous traditions.
