Indonesia: 100 lashes for sex outside of marriage, crowd shouts "Harder!"
The world's largest Muslim country allows Aceh province to operate under Sharia law and punish "moral offenders" with lashes for gambling, adultery, and "forbidden intimacy." Today, four individuals received 100 lashes each in front of a crowd, including children.
Authorities in the Aceh province of Indonesia, a strictly Islamic region operating under Sharia law, held a public lashing event today (Thursday) in which two women and two men received 100 lashes each for having sexual relations outside of marriage. Some members of the crowd, which included children, shouted "Harder!" as the cane was brought down repeatedly on the backs of the offenders.
Four other people received 22 lashes each at the same event for the lesser offense of "physical intimacy," which can include hugging and kissing, while two others received seven lashes each for getting too close to one another, such as holding hands. One man received 20 lashes for consuming alcohol.
All these acts are considered offenses in Aceh, a province granted special autonomy from Indonesia as part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended a 30-year separatist insurgency. Aceh is the only province in Indonesia that operates under Sharia law, which has been enforced there since 2002 and was further tightened in 2015 to apply to non-Muslims, who make up about 1% of the population.
While lashing is not a legal form of punishment in Indonesia as a whole, it enjoys broad support in the autonomous province of Aceh as a penalty for a series of "moral offenses," including adultery, same-sex relations, gambling, and drinking alcohol. Punishments can also be imposed for wearing tight clothing or for men failing to attend Friday prayers.
Just last month, a young couple in Aceh received 21 lashes each for kissing during a live broadcast on TikTok. Eini Nadira, a 22-year-old resident of Banda Aceh who witnessed that event, remarked:
"In my opinion, this lashing is completely justified, because it serves as a warning to other residents in Aceh to be more careful in their use of social networks. It also raises awareness that such acts are unacceptable, and thus educates the public."
