CONTENT WARNING, CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF BRUTALITY. Two men in Aceh, a province in Indonesia, were publicly caned 77 times in a city park after neighbours reported they had seen the couple engaging in gay sex and reported them to the police.
The couple were convicted in November when residents said they broke into their apartment after becoming suspicious of their sexuality and caught them having sex. They were then taken into custody and sentenced to 80 lashes each, which was then dropped to 77 lashes as they had spent three months in prison.
Dozens of people gathered in Tamansari city park on Thursday 28 to see the men receive the horrific “punishment”. Five enforcers, dressed in robes and hoods, delivered the whipping, each taking turns after every 40 lashes.
Halfway through, the vicious beating was paused to give each man a drink of water before the caning resumed. The mother of one of the men fainted at the sight of her child being flogged.
Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, Phil Robertson, stated that the authorities who carried out the public caning were guilty of torture and that they “must be universally condemned for this brutal, absolutely medieval punishment for an act that should never have been criminalised in the first place.”
Heru Triwijanarko, a public order official in Aceh, stated, “Islamic sharia enforcement is final, no matter who it is, and even visitors must respect local norms.”
Public Torture of Gay Couple in Indonesia…
Daily Brief: https://t.co/xQdvT2GCuk pic.twitter.com/kX1Uq5fdA1
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) January 29, 2021
Aceh is the only province in Indonesia to practice sharia law, and this is the third time that gay men have been flogged since the law was introduced in 2015. Four other people were caned on the same day, receiving between 17 and 40 lashes, over accusations they had met with members of the opposite sex or drank alcohol.
While homosexuality is not illegal in the rest of Indonesia, the LGBTQ+ community have faced rising discrimination in recent years.
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