27 February 2025 , 22:24
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Two university students have been flogged 185 times with rattan sticks in Indonesia for engaging in same-sex sexual relations.
An Islamic Shariah court in the conservative Aceh province sentenced the men to public flogging after they were found guilty of LGBTQ+ relations.
The couple, aged 18 and 24, were apprehended on November 7, 2024, in a citizens’ arrest.
Vigilantes who suspected the pair of being gay had broken into their rented room where they saw them naked and embracing.
They were then dragged to Sharia police for the alleged crime.
Dozens of people – including family members – watched as hooded Islamic religious police officers beat them with sticks in public today.
Dozens of people watched their punishment that was held in public (Picture: AFP)
Footage that Metro has chosen not to share shows one of the students collapsing to the ground as he is lashed.
One received 77 lashes while the other received 82 as he provided a place for their sexual activities. They were sent home afterwards.
A panel of judges chose not to impose the maximum sentence of 100 hits as the men were described as outstanding students, were polite in court, cooperated with authorities, and had no prior convictions.
‘They were caned after it was proven that they had a same-sex sexual relationship,’ Roslina A Djalil, the head of Sharia law enforcement in Aceh, told reporters, adding that the men had been turned over to the police by locals.
Montse Ferrer, a deputy regional director at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the flogging was ‘a horrifying act of discrimination’.
The two men were found guilty of sexual relations with another man under the strict Islamic Sharia law (Picture: UFP)
She added: ‘Intimate sexual relations between consenting adults should never be criminalizsed, and no one should be punished because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.
‘Having already had their privacy brutally invaded when they were ambushed by members of the public while having sex, these men were then humiliated in public today and physically harmed.’
While gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation — it is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of Sharia, the Islamic legal code.
In some cases, the law provides for up to 200 lashes for offences such as sex outside marriage, the consumption and sale of alcohol and gambling.
At least 15 people have been sentenced to flogging in Aceh for various violations so far this year, according to Amnesty.
One of the men prepares for his punishment to begin (Picture: AFP)
Another 135 people received similar punishment last year.
Ferrer described them as ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading,’ adding that they may amount to torture.
‘Aceh and Indonesian central government authorities must take immediate action to halt these practices and revoke the bylaws that allow them to take place,’ she stressed.
‘Such laws must be brought in line with international human rights law and standards, and with Indonesia’s obligations under its own Constitution.
‘Aceh’s regional autonomy, which is its basis to apply Sharia law, must not come at the expense of human rights.’