An Indonesian man is publicly caned on May 23, 2017, for having gay sex in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Beawiharta / Reuters</s>Banda Aceh: Two Indonesian men will be publicly caned for having sex, in a first for the Muslim-majority country where there are concerns over mounting hostility towards the small gay community.

The pair, aged 20 and 23, were last week found guilty of having broken sharia rules in conservative Aceh province — the only part of Indonesia that implements Islamic law — and sentenced to 85 strokes of the cane each.

The men, whose identities have not been revealed, were caught together in March by vigilantes who burst into the house where they were staying in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.

Public caning has long been common for offences such as gambling and drinking in Aceh, which was given the right to implement sharia law in 2001 as part of a deal with the central government aimed at ending an insurgency.

But Tuesday's caning will be the first time such a punishment has been meted out for gay sex since a sharia regulation came into force two years ago banning the practice. Gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population.

After the men were sentenced last week by a sharia court, Amnesty International urged authorities in Aceh to revoke their convictions.

"Laws criminalising consensual sexual activity contravene international human rights law and standards," the rights group said in a statement.

"Under international human rights law, the use of caning as a punishment constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and may amount to torture."

The caning is expected to be carried out on Tuesday morning in front of a mosque in Banda Aceh. There has been a growing backlash against Indonesia's small lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community over the past year, with ministers, hardliners and influential

 Islamic groups lining up to publicly denounce homosexuality.

The caning comes just two days after police in Jakarta detained 141 men including several foreigners for allegedly taking part in a gay sex party at a sauna.

Officers raided the sauna and halted what they said was a party promoted as "The Wild One". Although homosexuality is not illegal outside Aceh, police said 10 of those arrested at the party could be charged under the country's tough anti-pornography laws.</s>Religious police in Indonesia publicly caned two men Tuesday for having consensual gay sex.

The men received more than 80 lashes each, inflicted by hooded men inside a mosque in the city of Banda Aceh as hundreds of people watched, many of them recording the scene on mobile phones.

"The convicts will be returned to their family after being caned publicly as the caning is considered a social sanction," Yusnardi, head of the Sharia police force in the conservative province of Aceh, told reporters. "Hopefully it will be a deterrent for people not to do anything against Islamic law".

“Flogging sentences and the criminalization of same sex relations are both flagrant violations of international human rights law," Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Josef Benedict said. "The international community must put pressure on Indonesia to create a safer environment for the LGBTI community before the situation deteriorates further. Nobody should be punished for consensual sex.”

The two men were arrested in March after local residents who suspected they were gay broke into their rented room and found them having sex.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, but Aceh, the most conservative province in the Muslim-majority country, introduced anti-homosexuality laws in 2014.

Tuesday's public caning marked the first application of the law; however, hundreds were also caned for offenses including gambling, drinking alcohol, and women wearing tight clothing in 2016.</s>An Indonesian man, one of two to be publicly caned for having gay sex, is taken to be caned in Banda Aceh on May 23. Chaideer Mahyuddin / AFP – Getty Images

At the end of the lashing, the two men were helped off the platform. They were free to return to their families, authorities said.

Aceh is Indonesia’s most westerly province, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, where Islam first took hold in the archipelago.

The province caned 339 people in 2016 for a range of crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.

Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims but is officially a secular country. Most Muslims practice a moderate form of the religion.

Religious police in Aceh have also been known to rebuke Muslim women without headscarves or those wearing tight clothes, and people drinking alcohol or gambling.

Indonesian University Tries to Weed Out LGBTQ Applicants

Aceh is the only province allowed to implement sharia Islamic law under a special agreement that was signed in 2005 to bring an end to a bloody separatist movement.

Homosexuality is not illegal under Indonesian national law, but the LGBTQ community has come under pressure since government officials expressed reservations last year about activism by its members.

detained more than 140 men in a raid on a gay club on Sunday on suspicion of violating pornography laws.

Rights groups and activists have raised concern over the persecution of minorities, moral policing and violations of privacy and expression.

A presidential spokesman declined to comment on the caning.</s>Indonesian women stand in front of the Syuhada mosque as they watch a man being publicly caned for having gay sex, in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, Indonesia May 23, 2017. An Indonesian woman prays before watching a man being publicly caned for having gay sex, in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, Indonesia May 23, 2017.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Reuters.</s>Religious police in Indonesia caned two men for sex on Tuesday, with hooded men inflicting 82 lashes on each of them as hundreds of people watched the punishment ordered by an Islamic court.

Cheers and applause went up from a crowd gathered outside a mosque in the city of Banda Aceh, capital of the conservative province of Aceh, as the masked men took turns to flog the pair on a raised platform.

The men stood quietly, their heads down, as spectators heckled them and shouted insults.

The punishment, condemned by rights groups, marked the first application of anti-homosexuality laws introduced in the province in 2014.

Aceh has long had a reputation as Indonesia’s most conservative region. It is the only province that criminalises same-sex relations and that uses Islamic law as its legal code in addition to the national criminal code.

Up to 1,000 people, many filming with smartphones, watched as the two men received 82 lashes each. Many others watched the punishment being meted out on a livestream video.

Some in the crowd carried banners rejecting the presence of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Aceh.

“I hope there won’t be any more such cases of homosexuality, it is shocking,” said Eni Tri Retnaningsih, a 20-year-old student who said she had watched others caned before for other offences such as adultery.

At least eight other men and women were caned for other offences ahead of the punishment of the two found guilty of having gay sex.

Police separated men and women in the crowd as proceedings began, with 10 men in brown robes and hoods preparing a bundle of canes in case any broke during the flogging.

The beatings were delivered on the clothed backs of the men and women, some of whom cried out in pain with each stroke. In some cases, the caning was suspended briefly if the offender signalled they were in too much pain.

At the end of the lashing, the two men were helped off the platform. They were free to return to their families, authorities said.

Aceh is Indonesia’s most westerly province, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, where Islam first took hold in the archipelago.

The province caned 339 people in 2016 for a range of crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.

Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims but is officially a secular country. Most Muslims practice a moderate form of the religion.

Religious police in Aceh have also been known to rebuke Muslim women without headscarves or those wearing tight clothes, and people drinking alcohol or gambling.

Aceh is the only province allowed to implement Sharia Islamic law under a special agreement that was signed in 2005 to bring an end to a bloody separatist movement.

Homosexuality is not illegal under Indonesian national law, but the LGBT community has come under pressure since government officials expressed reservations last year about activism by its members.

Police in the capital, Jakarta, detained more than 140 men in a raid on a gay club on Sunday on suspicion of violating pornography laws.

Rights groups and activists have raised concern over the persecution of minorities, moral policing and violations of privacy and expression.

A presidential spokesman declined to comment on the caning.</s>Banda Aceh: The crowd roared as two men in their early 20s - one muttering through clenched teeth - received 83 lashes each outside a mosque in the Indonesian province of Aceh for the crime of gay sex.

One of the men, who was just 20, was given a glass of water after the 40th lash. A doctor approached him after the 60th and asked him if he was still strong. He nodded.

Three hooded men took turns to flog the pair.

The audience, estimated by police to be 2500 people, gathered before the red-carpeted platform in front of Syuhada mosque in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, baying in frustration when the caning paused.

This was the first time sharia courts had imposed public flogging for sodomy under new laws introduced in 2014 as part of Aceh's Islamic criminal code, known as Qanun Jinayat.

The law criminalises liwath, or sodomy, with a maximum punishment of 100 lashes, 100 months in jail or a fine of 1000 grams of gold.

Four heterosexual couples also received up to 30 lashes of the cane for khalwat (being in close proximity, such as secluded in a room, when not married), which is effectively kissing and hugging.

One of the women couldn't continue after nine lashes and had a break before returning to the platform, where a white triangle marked where the convicted must stand and face the crowd while being caned.

"You are strong in bed, but you pretend to be in pain when caned," someone yelled.

A medical team, including an ambulance, were on standby. Under regulations, those being punished must be caned from the waist up.

Men and women were separated to observe the caning, with an announcer warning the crowd that children should not be present.

"But the mothers can then tell them at home as education on the enforcing of sharia law," he said.

Aceh is the only one of Muslim-majority Indonesia's 34 provinces that criminalises homosexuality and uses sharia as its legal code in addition to the national criminal code.

Endin Saprudin, a sharia police officer at the Aceh provincial administration, said the men would be free once they had been caned.

"The worldly punishment is completed after the execution of the sentence," Mr Endin told Fairfax Media.

"However I don't know about the punishment of the afterlife - whether or not they will be caned again. At least we have saved some Muslims by showing them such actions are clearly prohibited."

On March 28, vigilantes broke into an apartment in Banda Aceh, Aceh's capital, and took the two men to the police after catching them in bed together.

LGBT rights advocacy group Arus Pelangi said a video of the two men had gone viral, which put them at risk and should never have been circulated.

"Can you imagine the caning being carried out in front of so many people?" said chairwoman Yuli Rustinawati.

"Obviously it is painful to be caned but then many people are watching. It creates another pain psychologically, not only for the offenders but also for their families."

The men represented themselves in court and accepted their punishment.

Mr Endin, the sharia police officer, said they had been entitled to a lawyer but questioned why they would need one when they were caught red-handed.

"The pictures obviously show they committed a homosexual act," he said.

Prosecutors requested 80 lashes but the judges imposed a harsher sentence of 85, of which 83 were delivered.

Human Rights Watch had called on Indonesian President Joko Widodo to intervene and stop the public flogging.

"The court's less-than-maximum sentence of 85 lashes is no act of compassion. It does not change the reality that flogging is a grotesque display of medieval torture," said Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine.

Muhammad Iswanto, another sharia police officer, said data showed that no one punished under sharia law in Aceh had repeated their crime. "In the whole Aceh province, for all offences such as khamar (alcohol), zinah (adultery), until now we do not have a recidivist," he said.

Moammar, a 20-year-old chemistry student, came to watch the caning with nine of his friends from campus. "I am curious because this is the first caning on a liwath case," Moammar said. "I want this case to be the first and last case of homosexuality."

The central government in Jakarta granted Aceh's religious leaders the right to impose sharia-inspired law in 2001 as part of a deal struck to quell a decades-long separatist movement in the province.

But Ayi, a Banda Aceh resident who lives in the same neighbourhood as one of the gay men, said caning was another form of violence.

"We had 30 years of conflict. But now we have this," she told Fairfax Media.</s>Indonesian police have arrested more than 100 men in a weekend raid on a gay sauna in the capital Jakarta, a day before two men are to be publicly flogged for having same sex relations.



Authorities raided what they said was a sex party promoted as ‘The Wild One,’ held at a sauna and gym venue in Jakarta’s north on Sunday evening.

Police spokesperson Agus Yuwono confirmed that 141 men, including the owner and several performers, had been detained for questioning and could be charged under Indonesia’s pornography law.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, but over the past 18 months the LGBT community has been subject to an unprecedented wave of discrimination and attacks, sparked by several controversial comments from conservative government ministers.

Last month police targeted a gathering of gay men in a hotel in Surabaya, following a tip-off from neighbours. Fourteen men were arrested and forced to undergo HIV tests.

Two men were also arrested in Banda Aceh in late March and convicted of sodomy under the province’s sharia law. The men were sentenced to 85 lashes with the cane, which will be meted out publicly in the provincial capital on Tuesday.



This will be the first time Aceh’s sharia courts have sentenced people to flogging for homosexual acts.



Yulita Rustinawati from the LGBT activist group Arus Pelangi said that while all the details of Sunday’s raid were not year clear, the arrests were likely part of a growing trend of intolerance toward the queer community in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.



“It’s been increasing for two years now,” Rustinawati said of the recent crackdowns, “It’s bad for democracy, for freedom of expression and freedom of association. We’re not sure what the government is trying to achieve. We are queer and we are not going away.”</s>Two men were caned 83 times Tuesday as a punishment for having homosexual sex in Indonesia’s ultra-conservative Aceh province.

Hundreds of people turned out to see the public punishment, held at a mosque in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, filming the caning on their phone cameras. It is very rare, even in Aceh, which follows strict Islamic law, for two men to be caned for having sexual relations.

The men, aged 20 and 23, were arrested in March by vigilantes. Neighbors had barged into an apartment with the men and filmed them naked with camera phones, according to rights groups. The videos were shared widely in local media.

They were subsequently found guilty of violating Aceh’s strict Islamic laws and were sentenced to 85 lashes. On Tuesday, two lashes were taken off because the men had already served two months in prison.

The punishment site was under tight security. The young men were caned alongside four other couples, who had been found guilty of being intimate outside of marriage.

The beatings began at 9 a.m. local time and finished four hours later.

Unlike the rest of Indonesia, Aceh follows strict Islamic laws, which make sexual activity outside marriage and same-sex relations illegal.

During sentencing, Khairil Jamal, the lead judge, said both defendants were clearly guilty.

“No evidence was found to justify and forgive them. Therefore, they shall be punished according,” he said.

“These young men are two Indonesians who wanted nothing more than to live their lives and have their privacy respected,” Kyle Knight from Human Rights Watch wrote about the case last week.

The public punishment comes just days after more than a hundred men were arrested at a gym and sauna in North Jakarta, accused of participating in a gay sex party.

Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono told CNN Monday there were huge concerns among Indonesia’s LGBT community.

“So much fear, I meet them almost every day, if not every other day. I’ve been helping many of them to escape arrest or to deal with abuses, give them counseling,” he said.</s>On Tuesday, two men in the Indonesian province of Aceh were publicly caned 83 times for engaging in consensual homosexual sex, marking the first time that gay men have been flogged under Sharia law in the province.

The men, aged 20 and 23, stood on a stage in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, dressed in white gowns, while a team of hooded men lashed their backs with a cane. They had initially been sentenced to 85 lashes, but had the penalty reduced by two for the two months they spent in jail after their arrest, reports The Telegraph.

The couple was found together in bed by vigilantes who broke into their rented room in order to catch them having sex. While homosexual relations are not illegal in Indonesia, they are in Aceh province, which has been granted a special exemption to adopt and enforce laws based on a strict interpretation of Islam.

Four heterosexual couples in Aceh were also caned on Tuesday for showing affection outside of marriage, but received a far lesser number of strokes as punishment. More than 300 people in Aceh have been caned for other offenses that violate Sharia law, including gambling, drinking or selling alcohol, wearing tight clothes, or skipping Friday prayers.

The canings, which took place outside a mosque, drew a large crowd of observers, some of whom tried to capture pictures of the event on their smartphones. The crowd cheered as the lashes were dealt out.

Several human rights advocates have denounced public caning as a form of cruel and inhuman punishment. Human Rights Watch has said the practice constitutes torture under international law, and previously called on Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to revoke the sentence.

Indonesian authorities insisted that the men convicted of homosexuality had gotten off easy, as they did not receive the maximum possible sentence of 100 strokes.

“The court’s less-than-maximum sentence of 85 lashes is no act of compassion,” Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “It does not change the reality that flogging is a grotesque display of medieval torture.”

Josef Benedict, the deputy director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific for Amnesty International, also condemned the sentence, saying: “These men were subjects of an ambush by their neighbours who stormed into their home, filmed them and handed them over to the Shari’a police. Every human being has a right to privacy, a right to enter consensual relations, and a right to physical protection.”

The caning comes as police in other parts of the country have led raids on places where gay men congregate, resulting in multiple arrests. Earlier this month, 14 men were arrested in Surabaya and subjected to HIV tests. On Monday, 141 men were arrested in a raid on what police said was a “gay party” at a sauna in Jakarta. In both instances, the men who were arrested could face charges under Indonesia’s strict yet ambiguous anti-pornography laws.
Two Indonesian men are publicly caned by local authorities in Aceh on accusation of illegal homosexual intercourse.