A young couple in Aceh province, Indonesia, were publicly flogged on Thursday, July 2, after an Islamic Shariah court convicted them of violating Islamic law by kissing during a TikTok livestream.
Aceh’s Sharia court ordered the two people to be flogged with a rattan cane 21 times each for kissing without being married.
Initially, the couple were sentenced to 25 lashes each, but it was reduced to 21 strokes because they had already spent four months in prison.
At least a hundred 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 Feb. 27 livestream in which they kissed in a car in Banda Aceh went viral and prompted reports to local Sharia authorities.
The court also seized a cellphone and a USB flash drive containing the TikTok live video as evidence to be destroyed.
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% of the province’s population.
The law allows up to 100 lashes for morality offenses including adultery and gay s£x. Caning is also allowed to punish people gambling and drinking, and for women who wear tight clothes or men who skip Friday prayers.
See video of Thursday’s flogging below.
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