Overview

• Authorities carried out the caning Tuesday on a stage in Banda Aceh’s Bustanussalatin park as roughly 100 people watched and recorded.
• A Sharia court convicted the men, ages 20 and 21, after religious police said they found them hugging and kissing in a park restroom in April.
• Judges issued 80 lashes but credited time in detention, resulting in 76 strikes for each man during a group caning of about 10 people.
• Aceh is Indonesia’s only province enforcing an Islamic criminal code that criminalizes same-sex relations and allows up to 100 lashes for morality offenses.
• Amnesty International called the flogging state-sanctioned discrimination and cruelty and urged the repeal of Aceh’s discriminatory bylaws.