(Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP) (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)] Dozens of people – including family members – watched as hooded Islamic religious police officers beat them with sticks in public today.
‘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.
An Islamic Shariah court in the conservative Aceh province sentenced the men to public flogging after they were found guilty of LGBTQ+ relations.
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.
(Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP) (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)] The couple, aged 18 and 24, were apprehended on November 7, 2024, in a citizens’ arrest.
