A young couple in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province were publicly caned on Thursday after an Islamic sharia court convicted them of violating Islamic law by kissing during a TikTok live stream.
Aceh’s sharia court ordered the two people to be whipped with a rattan cane 21 times each for kissing without being married. At least 100 people witnessed the caning, carried out by a group of people wearing robes and hoods on a stage in Bustanussalatin City Park in Banda Aceh.
The couple, a 22-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, were arrested in April after a February 27 live stream in which they kissed in a car in Banda Aceh went viral and prompted reports to local sharia authorities.
Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia that enforces a version of Islamic law. Indonesia’s secular central government granted the province the right to implement religious law in 2006 as part of a peace deal to end a separatist war.
In 2015, Aceh expanded the law to apply to non-Muslims, who account for about 1 per cent of the province’s population.
The law allows up to 100 lashes for morality offences including adultery and gay sex. Caning is also allowed to punish people gambling and drinking, and for women who wear tight clothes or men who skip Friday prayers.