Gay men caught having sex in Indonesia face caning

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Two gay men were caught having sex in Aceh province after their neighbors reported them to the police.

Gay people caught having sex in Indonesia’s staunchly Islamic Aceh province can be punished by 100 strokes of the cane, according to a regulation passed in 2014, amid outrage from rights groups.

Under an Islamic bylaw, anal sex between men and “the rubbing of body parts between women for stimulation” is outlawed. The rule applies to all Muslims including foreigners.

The two men, aged 20 and 23, were caught on video naked in a room together by a neighbor. In the video, one man is seen sitting on the floor, covering his face, speaking to someone on his cellphone asking for help. His alleged partner is topless, only wearing blue shorts, and is seen trying to walk out of the room that is being blocked by another man.

According to local reports, the two were caught at a boarding house at 11pm on Tuesday, March 28, at the province’s capital, Banda Aceh.

Shariah police chief investigator Marzuki, was quoted as saying the two were suspected by resident to be a couple because they were acting intimately for a few months. He said the two were caught in the act of intercourse, and that they found contraception in the room as additional evidence.

The couple was handed over to municipal police for processing.

Gay sex is not illegal in the rest of the country, which mainly follows a criminal code inherited from former colonial ruler the Netherlands. 

Aceh province, the only part of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation that is allowed to implement Islamic sharia law, already carries out public canings for gambling, drinking alcohol and fraternising with the opposite sex outside of marriage.

Aside from gay sex, adultery is also punishable by 100 lashes and punishes those who accuse others of adultery without proof with 80 lashes.

Canings – which are carried out with thin rattan sticks in public and aimed at humiliating rather than causing physical pain – can be substituted with payments of pure gold or jail time.
Ismail Hasani, from prominent Indonesian rights group the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, criticised the law in 2015 as “cruel, inhumane and against the constitution” and called for it to abolished.

“The government should not meddle in private affairs and instead guarantee individual rights such as freedom,” he said.

Aceh gained a degree of autonomy in 2001 in a deal with Jakarta aimed at quelling a decades-long separatist movement, and has been slowly implementing sharia law ever since.

The introduction of sharia laws has speeded up since Aceh struck a peace deal with the central government in 2005. – with reports from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com