Men have publicly channeled by the Indonesian Islamic Court to hug and kiss

Two men in the conservative province of the ACEH in Indonesia were a part of a group of people on Tuesday after a court of Islamic Sharia law condemned them for violating Islamic law by hugging and kissing, what the court judged can lead to prohibited sex.

A hearing of a hundred people witnessed the caning on a stage in the park of the city of Bustanussalatin in Banda Aceh on Tuesday. The men, aged 20 and 21, were whipped on their backs with a rattan cane tens of times by a group of people wearing dresses and caps.

ACEH allows up to 100 eyelashes for morality offenses, including gay sex and sex between unmarried people. Cightfish is also a punishment in Aceh to play, drink alcohol, women who wear tight clothes and men who do not participate in Friday prayers.

The Aceh court condemned men to 80 strikes each after the Islamic religious police said they had caught them engaged in what the court judged the sexual acts of cuddles and kissing in a bathroom in a public park, the judicial archives said.

Eight other people were publicly caained on Tuesday for adultery and game.

The men were arrested in April at Taman Sari City Park in Banda Aceh after the residents told a police patrol that they had seen the men enter the same bathroom in the park. The police found the men inside the kiss and hugs. Before meeting in the park, the pair contacted an online dating application, according to the judicial archives.

4 previous canings linked to homosexuality since 2006

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia to practice Sharia law. There have been four previous channels for cases linked to homosexuality since the province implemented Islamic law and created a religious police and judicial system in 2006. Change was a concession of the national government to end a long -standing separatist uprising.

The national penal code of Indonesia does not regulate homosexuality, but the central government cannot eliminate Sharia law in Aceh. However, the central government previously put pressure on ACEH officials to abandon a previous version of a law calling people to be stoned to death for adultery.

ACEH expanded its Islamic statutes and its penal code in 2015, extending the law of Sharia law to non-Muslims, which represent approximately one percent of the population of the province.

Two other men were publicly channeled in February at the same Aceh park after a Sharia court condemned them for having sex.

A coalition of human rights groups submitted a request to the Supreme Court of Indonesia in 2016 to request an examination of the ACEH regional regulations authorizing canoeing, but the request was rejected. The Indonesian Ministry of Internal Affairs published a letter in 2016 to the Governor of Aceh about the caning, noting that regional laws in Indonesia should be applied for minor crimes.

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‘Not good for Indonesia’

The preserver is a bodily punishment and Indonesia has ratified an agreement requiring the abolition of inhuman sanctions, said Maidina Rahmawati, acting executive director of the Institute for the Reform of Criminal Justice in Indonesia.

“That the public cane, even the decking act itself, is contrary to various laws and regulations and also unlike the interests of human rights in Indonesia because its exposure is not good for Indonesia,” said Rahmawati.

The change in political dynamics played a role in implementing politics, said Rahmawati.

“Because it seemed to be the right thing to do, it had to be done, you had to be told to support the Sharia based on Aceh,” said Rahmawati.

Amnesty International published on Tuesday a statement calling for the cane of the two men “a disturbing act of discrimination and cruelty sanctioned by the state”.

“This punishment is a horrible reminder of the stigma and institutionalized abuses facing LGBTQ + individuals in Aceh. Intimate relations between consenting adults should never be criminalized,” said the regional director of regional research of Amnesty, Montse Ferrer, in the press release.