Two, yet to be identified men, aged 20 and 23, were on Tuesday, flogged in front of a mosque in Indonesia’s Aceh province for engaging in gay sex.
The duo were caught in bed together during a raid by vigilantes sometime in March 2017.
According to CNN, rights groups claimed the vigilantes barged into their room and started filming them naked as they begged for help.
The duo were found guilty of violating Aceh’s strict Islamic laws and were sentenced to 85 lashes. The lashes were then reduced by two because they had already served two months in prison.
Gay sex is not illegal in most of Indonesia but it is in Aceh, the only province which exercises Islamic law.
The beatings began at 9 a.m. local time and finished four hours later. They were canned alongside four other couples who were found guilty of being intimate outside marriage.
A large crowd of observers cheered as the caning took place. “Let this be a lesson to you,” one of the men watching cried out. “Do it harder,” another man yelled.
Speaking to BBC’s Rebecca Henschke, one of the men, who was kicked out of medical school following the discovery said: “I just want the caning to be over and to go back to my family, I have been deeply depressed. I am trying to pull myself out of a deep black hole,” he said.
This is the first time the province is punishing people for gay sex. It was in this same province that 13 people – seven men and six women aged between 21 and 30 – were caned at a mosque for sexual misconduct such as “being too close to her boyfriend,” spending time with a woman at a hidden location that could lead to adultery, and breaking Islamic laws on intimacy, such as touching, hugging and kissing, between unmarried people.
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